Name: Cole Slaw
Ingredients: 1 small head of cabbage; vinegar; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Cabbage and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cole Slaw

Ingredients

1 small head of cabbage
vinegar
coarse sea salt (to taste)

Directions

Remove six or seven outer leaves from the cabbage and cut off the stalk as close as possible.
Chop the cabbage finely.
Mix the chopped cabbage with plenty of vinegar and salt to taste.

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.

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 slaw and supplies the crisp, crunchy texture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the cabbage.

“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.