Skip to main content
Main

Cabbage Slaw

A cooked cabbage dish flavored with butter, salt, sugar, water, cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cabbage Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Cut the cabbage using a cabbage cutter.

  2. Place the cabbage in a pan with butter or lard.

  3. Add salt, sugar, and water, then let it simmer until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the cream just before serving, then add vinegar.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into tender strands as it simmers.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for richness and helps the cabbage cook gently in the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the finished slaw.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream just before serving, then add vinegar.. Cream can curdle or separate when it sits in acid or is overheated. Adding it off the heat and just before serving, with the vinegar added after, helps keep the dressing smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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

More cabbage slaw recipes

Hot 11Cold 7Red 4 See all 21 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes