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Salad

Cream Slaw

A cabbage salad with a creamy vinegar-based dressing made from eggs, sour cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Mix eggs, sour cream, and flour in a bowl until well combined.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling vinegar mixture.

  5. Boil the combined mixture thoroughly.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Sprinkle the finely cut cabbage with salt, black pepper, and mustard.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the cabbage.

  3. Mix the cabbage and dressing well.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 and add richness as they set with heat.
Sour cream
Adds creaminess and a mild tang to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw and absorbs the dressing's flavor and moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to offset the vinegar's acidity.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling vinegar mixture. Eggs can scramble if added to very hot liquid without enough stirring. Keeping the mixture moving and the heat controlled lets the eggs and flour thicken it smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cream, sugar, flour, egg, walnut, butter. 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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