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Cold Slaw

Cold Slaw is a cabbage salad dressed with a vinegar and butter sauce and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cold Slaw

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Wash the cabbage in cold water and cut it into thin slices.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, water, butter, pepper, and salt. Heat until just boiling.

  2. Remove the saucepan from heat and stir in the egg yolks until smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cabbage and serve with roast meat or poultry.

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

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides the crisp, fresh texture.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and gives it a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but scramble if they get too hot. Removing the saucepan from the heat before adding them lets them thicken the sauce smoothly without curdling.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, pepper, egg. 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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