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Salad

Cold Slaw

A cabbage salad dressed with a mustard‑egg yolk vinaigrette.

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

Why it works: Mustard and cabbage 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

Make the dressing

  1. Combine the egg yolks, cream, mustard, salt, and vinegar in a bowl.

  2. If you are not using cream, mix in a small lump of butter with a little flour.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage very finely.

Heat and pour

  1. Heat the mixture.

  2. Pour the heated mixture over the hot 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.

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. Mustard + cabbagetop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they heat, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps bind the dressing together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the warm dressing.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture gently. Egg yolks thicken when heated but curdle or scramble if they get too hot. Heat gently, stirring constantly, so the dressing thickens smoothly before it is poured over the cabbage.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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