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Salad

Cold Slaw

Cold slaw is a chilled cabbage salad dressed with vinegar, egg yolk, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cold Slaw

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage in half and soak it in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Finely shave the cabbage with a sharp knife.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the egg yolk with salt and cayenne pepper in a bowl.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar over the egg yolk and stir well.

Combine

  1. Pour the mixture over the 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.

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

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 the crisp, crunchy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the slaw its sharp, tangy flavour.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies with the hot vinegar to thicken the dressing and make it creamy.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar over the egg yolk and stir well. Pouring the hot vinegar in while stirring constantly lets the yolk warm gradually and thicken smoothly. If the yolk is added to the hot liquid all at once or left unstirred, it can scramble into lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

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