Skip to main content
Salad

Sour Cream Slaw

A cold cabbage and green pepper slaw dressed with a sour cream and vinegar sauce.

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

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sour Cream Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cabbage finely.

  2. Soak the sliced cabbage in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Slice the green pepper finely.

  4. Soak the sliced green pepper with the cabbage.

  5. Drain the cabbage and green pepper.

  6. Dry the drained cabbage and green pepper with a towel.

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the vinegar in a saucepan until hot.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix them with the sour cream.

  3. Add the egg and sour cream mixture to the hot vinegar, stirring until it thickens.

  4. Remove the vinegar mixture from heat.

Combine and serve

  1. Mix the vinegar mixture with the cabbage and green pepper.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky body of the salad.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set with gentle heat.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy, tangy texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and balances the creamy dressing.
Green pepper
Adds fresh, slightly bitter crunch and colour to the salad.

The step that matters

Add the egg and sour cream mixture to the hot vinegar, stirring until it thickens.. Egg proteins set when heated, thickening the dressing. If the heat is too high or stirring stops, the eggs can curdle into lumps instead of forming a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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