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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad dressed with a creamy mustard vinaigrette.

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

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard 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

Prepare the dressing

  1. Wash and shred the cabbage finely.

  2. In a pan, combine cream, mustard, salt, butter, sugar, and the beaten egg yolk.

  3. Boil the mixture, then add the vinegar and stir well.

Assemble and cool

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the cabbage and mix until well combined.

  2. Set aside to cool.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and holds the dressing.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the dressing.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies and thickens the cooked dressing through its proteins.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the cream.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently; if it boils too hard or too long it can scramble and turn grainy. Add the vinegar only after boiling so the dressing stays smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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