a wordslaw

Shredded raw cabbage, dressed and served cold, on every Carolina barbecue tray and most sandwiches. East of Raleigh the dressing is mayonnaise or whipped salad dressing and the slaw is white or yellow; in Lexington it is vinegar, ketchup and pepper — the dip — and the slaw is red, also called barbecue slaw. South Carolina buffets list coleslaw among the sides. The word is the back half of coleslaw, and the front half is not said; coleslaw came to the colonies with the Dutch settlers of New York.

Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, was written down in American English in 1794 as 'cold slaw', the Dutch kool heard as the English cold; the folk spelling lasted until the 1860s, when cole came back, and by then the back half had come loose and slaw stood alone. Dutch colonists brought coleslaw to the Thirteen Colonies. Jerry Bledsoe, the Greensboro columnist of the 1980s barbecue war, wrote in 1996 that barbecue is always served with slaw in North Carolina and always has been. The split is by region. The Wikipedia article on coleslaw calls North Carolina slaw fine and vinegary and says that around Lexington red slaw is made with ketchup and vinegar rather than mayonnaise and is the prevailing kind, unlike the rest of the state; NCpedia has white or yellow coleslaw in the east and red coleslaw, 'barbecue slaw', coloured with ketchup or dip, in the Piedmont. The Lexington sandwich's distinguishing feature, the town's article says, is its red slaw, and in the late 1990s Wendy's put red slaw on a 'Carolina Classic' burger. Inference — red slaw is the dip's second job, and a pit that makes one makes the other from the same pot.