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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad with a vinegar and butter dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cold Slaw

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Shred the cabbage and mix with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Pour ½ cup vinegar over the cabbage and let it stand for 2 hours.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add mustard, vinegar, celery seeds, eggs, milk, and flour to the saucepan.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent curdling.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and add richness.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing so it coats the cabbage.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the slaw its tang and softens the cabbage.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw and provides crunch.
Milk
Adds moisture and mellows the dressing's sharpness.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing while stirring constantly. Eggs can curdle or scramble if they overheat or sit still in the pan. Constant stirring over medium heat lets the flour and eggs thicken the mixture smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, milk, celery, flour, vinegar, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, milk, celery, flour, vinegar, butter. 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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