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Hot Slaw

A cabbage salad dressed with butter, cream, and vinegar, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Hot Slaw

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 ↓

Hot Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Wash the cabbage and cut it into shreds.

  2. Boil the cabbage in salted water until tender, about 5 to 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the cabbage.

Dress and serve

  1. Melt the butter, cream, and vinegar together over gentle heat.

  2. Add the dressing to the boiled cabbage and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve immediately with fried poultry or meat.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and becomes tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the dressing.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the warm dressing its tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Melt the dressing gently. Heating butter, cream, and vinegar over gentle heat keeps the cream from curdling or separating. Strong heat can split dairy, leaving a grainy, oily dressing instead of a smooth one that coats the warm cabbage.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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