Skip to main content
Salad

Cream Slaw

A cabbage slaw made with butter, cream, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Cream Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a large pot.

  2. Add the hand-cut cabbage and cream, and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and sugar, and boil again.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Cream + sugartop 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. Vinegar + sugartop 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the cabbage as it cooks.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens as it cooks, giving it body and texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, coating body to the cabbage.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that brightens the dish and sharpens the creamy flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stir in the vinegar and sugar, and boil again.. Acid added to hot cream can make it curdle or separate, leaving a grainy sauce. Adding the vinegar with the sugar and keeping the boil controlled helps the cream stay smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes