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Cream Slaw

A cabbage slaw dressed with a boiled vinegar, butter, and egg mixture.

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 and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix egg, sour cream, and flour in a bowl.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling vinegar mixture and boil thoroughly.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Pour the mixture over the finely cut cabbage sprinkled with salt, pepper, and mustard.

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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw and provides the crisp texture.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides sharpness that balances the sweetness and richness.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it body.
Flour
Stabilises the egg and sour cream mixture so it thickens without curdling.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to balance the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling vinegar mixture and boil thoroughly. Egg proteins can scramble if the hot liquid is added too fast or without stirring. Adding the egg mixture gradually while stirring, then boiling, lets the dressing thicken smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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