Skip to main content
Salad

Cabbage Slaw

A cabbage slaw dressed with an egg, sugar, vinegar, and salt-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cabbage Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg well.

  2. Add sugar and salt to the egg and mix.

  3. Combine vinegar and a little water, then add to the egg mixture.

  4. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly until it just boils.

  5. Remove from heat and let it cool.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chopped cabbage and serve.

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. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cabbage + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cabbage + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it a creamy body.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to balance the acidity of the vinegar.
Cabbage
Forms the base of the slaw, adding crunch and bulk.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg mixture over low heat. Egg proteins set and can curdle if heated too fast or too long. Low heat with constant stirring thickens the dressing smoothly, and stopping at just boiling keeps it from scrambling.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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.

More cabbage slaw recipes

Hot 11Cold 7Red 4 See all 21 →

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes