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Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad with a creamy egg yolk and butter dressing, seasoned with cider vinegar, salt, and horseradish or mustard.

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 horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat together the egg yolks and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cider vinegar and butter.

  3. Stir constantly over medium heat until the mixture boils.

Assemble the slaw

  1. Pour the mixture over the finely cut cabbage.

  2. Sprinkle the cabbage with coarse sea salt.

  3. Add horseradish or mustard.

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 + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set with heat, giving it a creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the dressing, softening its sharpness.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, glossy texture and a rounder flavor.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw, providing crisp texture and body.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over medium heat until the mixture boils. Egg yolks can scramble if overheated or left unstirred, so constant stirring keeps the dressing smooth and thickened rather than lumpy.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, cider, vinegar, butter, horseradish. 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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