Name: Hot Slaw
Ingredients: 1 small piece of butter; 1 small head of cabbage; ½ teacup cream; 1 egg; 1 tablespoon mustard; 1 teaspoon sugar; salt; pepper

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hot Slaw

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the cabbage finely and sprinkle with flour.
Melt the butter in a pan.
Season the cabbage with salt and pepper, then add to the pan with the melted butter.
In a bowl, mix the cream, egg, mustard, and sugar, then heat thoroughly.
Serve the hot slaw warm.

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.

Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

Swap the cabbage

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

Horseradishfits better
Chivefits better
Capsicumfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, egg, mustard, sugar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.