Skip to main content
Salad

Cole Slaw

A cabbage salad dressed with a sour cream and egg yolk mixture, sweetened with sugar and seasoned with vinegar, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cole Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Wash the cabbage, trim off any discolored parts, cut into quarters, and slice into very fine shreds, using only the outer parts.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, heat the sour cream. If using milk, add butter and heat until steaming hot.

  2. Beat the egg yolk and mix in the sugar, salt, vinegar, white pepper, and cayenne.

  3. Pour the mixture into the hot cream and stir over the heat until slightly thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and pour over the cabbage, mixing well.

  5. Set aside to cool, stirring occasionally.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 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. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the warm dressing and helps it turn creamy and smooth as it sets.
Sour cream
Provides the creamy body and tang that make up the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the cream.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw, providing crisp texture and fresh flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk mixture into the hot cream. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently, but if the mixture gets too hot or is stirred poorly it can curdle or scramble. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly until it is only slightly thickened.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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