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Hot Slaw

A warm cabbage slaw with butter, flour, vinegar, mustard, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Hot Slaw

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard 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 ↓

Hot Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour for 1 minute.

  3. Add the cider vinegar, salt, pepper, and mustard.

  4. Heat the mixture until hot but do not boil.

  5. Beat the egg yolks with the milk in a bowl.

  6. Stir the beaten egg yolk mixture into the skillet.

  7. Stir until the mixture thickens, but do not let it boil.

Add the cabbage and serve

  1. Add the cut cabbage.

  2. Stir until the cabbage is heated through.

  3. Serve.

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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens slightly as it heats through in the dressing.
Egg yolks
Thicken the warm vinegar mixture into a creamy dressing as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor in the base of the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gives the dressing body before the liquids go in.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the egg and butter.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk mixture in and keep it below a boil. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the mixture boils they can curdle and turn grainy, so the dressing must only be heated gently until it thickens.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cider, vinegar, pepper, mustard, egg. 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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