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Cream Cabbage Slaw

A creamy slaw made from shredded hard white cabbage, thick cream, sugar, cayenne pepper, and cider vinegar.

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

Cream Cabbage Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Shred the cabbage using a slaw cutter.

  2. Sprinkle salt over the shredded cabbage to taste.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, whip the cream until very stiff.

  2. Add sugar and cayenne pepper to the whipped cream.

  3. Stir in enough cider vinegar to achieve a sour taste.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard white cabbage
Forms the bulk and crisp texture of the slaw.
Thick cream
Whipped into a light, rich base that gives the slaw its creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that brightens the creamy dressing.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until very stiff. Whipping traps air in the cream's fat-coated bubbles to build structure. If you go too far, the fat clumps and separates into butter, leaving a grainy, greasy dressing instead of a smooth one.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

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