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Hot Slaw

A cabbage salad cooked briefly with vinegar, egg yolks, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Hot Slaw

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hot Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with vinegar and water until well mixed.

Cook the slaw

  1. Place the cabbage in a bright saucepan over boiling water.

  2. Add the egg mixture, butter, salt, and minced red pepper to the cabbage.

  3. Stir and turn the cabbage frequently until the sauce thickens and resembles cream, about 1 minute.

  4. Do not let it boil for more than a minute.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 absorbs the warm sauce as it is turned.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat, giving it a creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Stop the cooking at the thickening point. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but once they get too hot they can curdle and turn grainy. Keeping the heat short and stirring constantly prevents the sauce from scrambling.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, pepper, butter. 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.

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