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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage slaw dressed with a buttery vinegar sauce and topped with hard‑boiled egg rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Shred the cabbage very fine and place it in a salad dish.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl over a tea kettle, combine vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, and butter.

  2. Beat the eggs well.

  3. Stir the beaten eggs into the vinegar mixture, cooking until it thickens.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat.

  5. Add the cream, stirring well.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the cabbage.

  2. Garnish the slaw with rings of hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Serve the slaw when cold.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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 bulk of the slaw and provides its crisp, fresh texture.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the flavour of the dressing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the sharp vinegar dressing.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the dressing's sharpness when stirred in.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs into the vinegar mixture. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the dressing thickens. If it gets too hot or is stirred too little, the eggs can scramble into lumps. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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