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Cabbage Slaw

A cabbage slaw dressed with a boiled vinegar, butter, egg, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cabbage 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 ↓

Cabbage Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter in the boiling vinegar.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  4. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the egg mixture and stir well.

  5. Return the mixture to the stove and boil for 1 minute.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the chopped cabbage.

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. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins thicken the hot vinegar mixture into a creamy, emulsified dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the slaw its sharp, tangy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps bind the dressing together.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg into the hot vinegar mixture. If hot liquid is poured in too quickly or not stirred well, the egg can scramble into lumps instead of thickening the dressing smoothly. Pouring slowly while stirring gently warms the egg evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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