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Salad

Cold Slaw

Cold Slaw is a chilled cabbage salad dressed with egg yolks, butter or oil, lemon juice, mustard, pepper, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cold Slaw

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage very fine.

  2. Drop it into very cold water.

  3. Drain the cabbage well.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub the yolks of the hard boiled eggs to a paste with the beaten egg.

  2. Add the butter or salad oil, lemon juice, mustard, pepper, salt, and sugar. Mix well.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the drained cabbage.

  2. Serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 that holds the dressing.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Emulsify with the fat and beaten egg to thicken the dressing into a creamy paste.
Beaten egg
Adds richness and helps bind the yolks into a smooth, thick dressing.
Butter or salad oil
Supplies fat that gives the dressing body and a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Drain the cabbage well. Excess water left on finely cut cabbage dilutes the dressing and makes the slaw watery, so it should be thoroughly drained before the dressing is added.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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