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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad dressed with a boiled egg and butter or oil vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cold Slaw

Why it works: Mustard and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine eggs, butter or olive oil, sugar, vinegar, mixed mustard, and pepper in a tin bucket.

  2. Place the bucket in a kettle of hot water and cook, stirring gently to avoid curdling.

  3. Once cooked, let the dressing cool.

Assemble the slaw

  1. Finely chop the cabbage, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and pour the cooled dressing over it.

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 + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a creamy, emulsified body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Butter or olive oil
Adds fat, giving the dressing a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to offset the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw, absorbing the dressing and providing crisp texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing gently. Eggs thicken when heated but curdle if they get too hot or are stirred too vigorously. Gentle, indirect heat from the hot water bath and constant stirring keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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