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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad with a mustard‑vinegar dressing and optional olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cold Slaw

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely shred the cabbage and place it in a large bowl.

  2. Mash the hard-boiled yolks while they are still hot in a separate bowl.

Dress and serve

  1. Mix in the vinegar, mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, olive oil (if using), celery seeds, and sugar until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture over the cabbage and stir well to combine.

  3. Add more vinegar if needed to achieve desired moisture.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the dressing to make it creamy and thicken it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the slaw and balances the richness of the yolks.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw, providing crunch and absorbing the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smoothness to the dressing, mellowing its sharpness.

The step that matters

Mash the yolks while still hot. Warm yolks break down more easily into a smooth paste, so the dressing blends without lumps. Once cooled, they become firmer and harder to mash evenly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper, olive, celery, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper, olive, celery, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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