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Salad

Hot Slaw

A salad of finely chopped cabbage dressed with a hot vinaigrette of vinegar, eggs, sugar, and sour cream.

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

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Chop the cabbage finely.

  2. Cook the cabbage until tender.

  3. Drain the cabbage.

  4. Season the cabbage with coarse sea salt to taste.

  5. Keep the cabbage hot.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, beaten eggs, sugar, and sour cream.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir the mixture well.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the hot cabbage.

  2. Mix thoroughly.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set when heated, giving it body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharp vinegar.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the dressing.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish, absorbing the warm dressing.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Beaten eggs can scramble if overheated. Bring the dressing just to a boil while stirring constantly, so the eggs thicken it smoothly rather than curdling into lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

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