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Warm Slaw

A warm cabbage slaw made with boiled vinegar, sweet cream, eggs, salt, and butter.

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

Warm Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cabbage finely.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs well.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, heat the vinegar until boiling.

  2. Stir the cream and beaten eggs into the boiling vinegar.

  3. Pour the mixture over the cooked cabbage.

Finish

  1. Press down with a plate, add salt and butter, and heat through.

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

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the warm dressing as it wilts.
Eggs
Thicken the warm dressing as they set when stirred into hot liquid.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the cream and butter.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded flavour to the finished slaw.

The step that matters

Stir the cream and beaten eggs into the boiling vinegar. Eggs can scramble if added to very hot liquid too quickly. Adding them gradually while stirring keeps the dressing smooth and lets the eggs thicken it evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, cream, 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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