Skip to main content
Main

Coleslaw Dressing

A dressing made by beating egg, sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, and butter, poured over shredded cabbage.

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

Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Coleslaw Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the egg well.

  2. Add sugar, salt, pepper, and vinegar to the egg.

  3. Heat the mixture until it reaches boiling point.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot dressing over finely shredded cabbage.

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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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 + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Its proteins set when heated, thickening the dressing and giving it body.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to offset the acidity of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the dressing a smooth, rounded richness.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture to boiling. Egg proteins set with heat, so the mixture thickens as it heats. Overheating or heating too fast can scramble the egg into lumps, leaving the dressing grainy instead of smooth.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes