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Salad

Cold Slaw

Cold Slaw is a chilled cabbage salad with egg yolk paste, butter, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and egg white rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the slaw

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped cabbage and the paste of egg yolks.

  2. Add melted butter, dry mustard, sugar, and vinegar to the cabbage mixture. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

Serve

  1. Garnish with the rings of egg whites before serving.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 dish and gives it a crisp, fresh texture.
Egg yolks
Mashed into a paste, they add richness and help bind the dressing to the cabbage.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness and sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg yolk paste into the cabbage. The yolks must be rubbed fully smooth before mixing so they coat the cabbage evenly rather than leaving lumps. Thorough mixing spreads the fat and acid through the whole batch.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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