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Dessert

Cold Slaw Dressing

A dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, vinegar, water, butter, and salt, cooked until thick and poured over cold cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cold Slaw Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the egg yolks, mustard, sugar, vinegar, water, butter, and salt thoroughly.

  2. Cook in a double boiler until thick.

Serve

  1. Pour over cold cabbage.

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.

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 + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving it a creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to offset the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that complements the eggs and vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until thick. Egg yolks thicken gently at moderate heat, but direct high heat can scramble them. A double boiler keeps the temperature low and even, so the dressing thickens smoothly without curdling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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