a dishwhite slaw

Finely chopped cabbage in a dressing of mayonnaise or whipped salad dressing, sweet and pale: the slaw of eastern North Carolina and of most of South Carolina. It goes on the tray beside the chopped whole hog and on the bun of the sandwich, where its sweetness sets off the vinegar and pepper of the meat. Eastern pits use mayonnaise almost universally; NCpedia lists white or yellow coleslaw among the eastern sides, the yellow taking mustard. The name exists only where the red slaw does. Everywhere else in the state this is coleslaw, from the Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad.

Coleslaw came to the colonies with the Dutch — the 1667 cookbook De Verstandige Kock gives a landlady's recipe of cabbage strips in melted butter, vinegar and oil — and the word is Dutch too, koolsla, cabbage salad, in American English by 1794 and spelled 'cold slaw' by ear until the 1860s. The mayonnaise version is younger than the word, since mayonnaise itself dates from the mid-eighteenth century, and it is the version the South took up, with buttermilk slaw a Southern variant. In North Carolina the coleslaw is fine-chopped and vinegary and served with barbecue; in the east it is dressed with mayonnaise or whipped salad dressing almost without exception and put on the bun of the sandwich, the way Memphis puts slaw on its pork sandwich. The South Carolina plate — pork, rice, hash, coleslaw, sweet pickles, white bread, iced tea — carries the same slaw beside mustard-sauced pork. Tradition holds — the sweetness is the point: against a whole hog dressed with vinegar and pepper, the slaw is the sweet thing on the tray.

Cabbage chopped fine, often with a little carrot or onion, dressed with mayonnaise or whipped salad dressing, sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper, and chilled until it weeps a little. Eastern pits chop it nearly as fine as the meat so the two mix on the bun. A yellow slaw takes mustard in the dressing. Served cold beside the hot pork on the tray, spooned on the sandwich, and on hot dogs across the Coastal Plain.

Sam Jones BBQ lists a sweet slaw (2026); Skylight Inn serves its tray with slaw and cornbread; the Lexington pits keep a white slaw for those who ask. South Carolina buffets put it beside hash and rice.