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Cabbage Hot Slaw

A hot cabbage slaw cooked with vinegar, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Cabbage Hot Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the chopped cabbage in cold water for 1 hour.

Cook

  1. Place the cabbage in an iron kettle with the vinegar.

  2. Cover the kettle and cook on low heat for 2 hours, stirring often.

  3. Add more vinegar as needed to prevent burning, and dilute with water if the vinegar is too strong.

Finish and serve

  1. Once tender, add butter, salt, and pepper to taste, and serve hot.

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

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 into a tender, shreddable texture as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness of the cooked cabbage.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished slaw.

The step that matters

Cook low and stir often, adding vinegar as needed. Cabbage sugars can scorch on the bottom of a heavy kettle over a long cook. Stirring spreads the heat and adding liquid keeps the mixture moist, so the cabbage softens evenly without burning.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, 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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