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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad dressed with sour cream, vinegar, sugar, celery seed, mustard seed, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the slaw

  1. Shred the cabbage and sprinkle with salt; mix well.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, beat together the sour cream and vinegar.

  2. Add the sugar, celery seed, mustard seed, and pepper to the cream mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the cabbage just 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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 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 crisp, bulky body of the slaw.
Sour cream
Creates a creamy, rich base for the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Celery seed
Contributes a warm, aromatic celery flavor to the dressing.
Yellow mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite to the dressing.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the cabbage just before serving. Salt draws water out of cabbage, so dressing added too early thins into a watery pool and the slaw loses its crispness.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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