How to make perfect coleslaw

Sometime in the last decade, coleslaw, so familiar a fixture of every Boxing Day buffet and summer picnic, has been rebranded. And every time I see a “slaw” sitting chirpily on the menu, a grumpy, Victor Meldrew-like surge of irritation courses through me. The Berni Inn salad bar never called it slaw. My dad never put ham and slaw sandwiches in our picnics. If it doesn’t have cabbage in it then it’s not coleslaw: it’s a salad. End of rant.

Making myself even more comfortable in pedants’ corner, coleslaw is a corruption of the Dutch koolsla, meaning cabbage salad, and arrived here via the USA. Cabbage was, according to the Oxford Encylopedia of Food and Drink in America, a popular crop “throughout the colonies”, and Dutch settlers, who grew it “extensively along the Hudson River” liked to serve it in the familiar, old-country way: the first mention of coleslaw in the USA dates from 1785.
Early versions seem only to have used a vinaigrette, but mayonnaise now seems to be the standard dressing, in Britain at least – preferably the gloopy sugary kind that smothers all other flavours, leaving you unsure whether you’re eating cabbage or carrot. The occasional chunks of raw onion, however, usually make themselves known. Perhaps, thinking about it, this explains the rebranding exercise. But I’m determined to make coleslaw cool again. Or, at least, nice.