Skip to main content
Salad

Cole Slaw

A cabbage salad dressed with a vinegar-based sauce containing eggs, mustard, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cole Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix together the butter, salt, sugar, pepper, and mustard.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and sweet cream to the mixture.

  3. Boil the vinegar in a pot.

  4. Stir in the other ingredients while boiling until it begins to thicken.

Combine

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the 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. 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 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
Provides the bulk of the slaw and its crisp, fresh texture.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that gives the slaw its tang.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as their proteins set with heat, and add richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the acidity of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, smoother flavour and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the other ingredients while boiling until it begins to thicken. Beaten eggs thicken as their proteins set with heat. If the mixture overheats or boils too long, the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy dressing. Stop once it just begins to thicken.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes