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Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad with eggs, sweet cream, mustard, and vinegar.

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

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard 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

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Sprinkle cabbage with salt and let it stand for 1 hour.

  2. Drain off the brine into a saucepan.

Make the dressing

  1. Add vinegar, butter, mustard (stirred with water), and pepper to the saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil, then stir in the beaten eggs and sweet cream.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the cabbage and serve cold.

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. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw and provides its crisp, crunchy texture.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set with heat, giving it body and richness.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the butter and cream.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and smoothness, mellowing the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Butter
Contributes fat and a rounded flavor to the dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the boiling mixture. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the eggs are added to a boiling liquid too quickly without constant stirring they can scramble into lumps instead of thickening the dressing smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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