Skip to main content
Salad

Cole Slaw with a Hot Dressing

A cabbage salad dressed with a hot egg, vinegar, mustard, sugar, and butter mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 with a Hot Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice and chop the cabbage finely, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. Mix the beaten eggs with vinegar, mustard, sugar, and melted butter.

  2. Pour the mixture over the seasoned 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.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 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 base of the slaw that the dressing coats.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a creamy, smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the sharp vinegar flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the seasoned cabbage just before serving.. Acidic dressing softens and wilts cabbage over time, so pouring it just before serving keeps the slaw crisp and the dressing fresh.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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