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Slaw Dressing

A vinegar-based dressing with sugar, mustard, eggs, butter, and pepper, served over finely chopped cabbage.

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

Slaw Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, salt, and mustard in a bowl.

  2. Beat in the eggs until well mixed.

  3. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and heat, stirring until it comes to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the butter and pepper, if using.

Serve

  1. Allow to cool, then pour over finely chopped 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. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + cabbagetop 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a creamy body.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the cooked dressing.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture. Eggs thicken when heated gently but can scramble if they get too hot or are heated too fast. Stirring constantly while bringing the mixture to a boil keeps the eggs smooth and lets the starch-free custard-style base set evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, mustard, egg, butter, pepper. 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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