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Hot Slaw

A hot slaw made with egg, vinegar, sour cream, sugar, salt, and finely shaved cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Hot Slaw

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Hot Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg in a teacup.

  2. Fill the teacup two-thirds full with vinegar.

Make the slaw

  1. Add sour cream, sugar, and salt to taste.

  2. Heat the mixture and add the finely shaved cabbage.

  3. Boil for five minutes.

Serve

  1. 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.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Beaten egg adds richness and helps thicken the creamy dressing as it heats.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the richness of the sour cream.
Sour cream
Supplies fat and a tangy body that forms the creamy base of the slaw.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens slightly in the hot dressing while keeping some crunch.

The step that matters

Boiling the sour cream mixture. Sour cream is prone to curdling or separating when it gets very hot or boils, because its proteins can clump and its fat can split out. Watching the heat closely during the five-minute boil helps keep the dressing smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

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