Skip to main content
Main

Warm Slaw

A warm cabbage slaw dressed with a hot vinegar, egg yolk, sour cream, butter, and sugar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Warm Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sour cream, butter, and sugar.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar over the mixture and stir well.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the finely cut cabbage and serve 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.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they gently set when combined with hot vinegar, giving it body.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sugar and richness.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, softening the dressing's sharpness and creating a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel in the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to offset the acidity of the vinegar.
Finely cut cabbage
Forms the base of the slaw, absorbing the warm dressing and softening slightly.

The step that matters

Pour the hot vinegar over the mixture and stir well. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them. Pour slowly while stirring constantly so the yolks warm gradually and thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, cream, butter, 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

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