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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad with a vinaigrette made from vinegar, mustard, pepper, paprika, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 dressing

  1. Shred the cabbage very fine.

  2. For the dressing, heat the vinegar with salt, sugar, mustard, pepper, and paprika.

  3. While hot, stir in the creamed butter.

  4. Pour the mixture over the beaten egg yolks and cook over hot water until it thickens slightly.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the hot dressing with the cabbage.

  2. Mix the cabbage with a French dressing using twice the amount of vinegar.

  3. Serve cold as a salad or with broiled fish or fried oysters.

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

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

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides crisp, fresh texture when finely shredded.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the slaw its sharp, tangy flavor and balances the richness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook gently, giving it a creamy, cohesive body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolk dressing over hot water. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if they get too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Cooking slowly over hot water and stopping once it thickens keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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