Coleslaw and southern fried chicken | This salad of shredded cabbage, known simply as 'slaw' in many parts of the United States, is of Dutch origin. The word coleslaw comes from the word koolsla, a conjunction of kool (cabbage) and sla, a shortened version of salade (salad). It is believed that Dutch colonists near Long Island were the first to grow cabbage in America. The Americanised 'coleslaw', the first recorded reference to which appeared in 1794, added mayonnaise to the earlier Dutch versi