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Salad

Warm Slaw

Warm slaw is a lightly cooked cabbage dish with butter, egg, sour cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Warm Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped cabbage and a little water.

  3. Simmer until the cabbage is thoroughly cooked.

Finish the slaw

  1. Beat the egg lightly and stir it into the cabbage.

  2. Finally, add the sour cream and season with salt and pepper.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cabbage + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 turns tender and sweet as it cooks.
Egg
Thickens the mixture as it heats, binding the cabbage into a creamy coating.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a tangy acidity that balances the cooked cabbage.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the pan before the cabbage goes in.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg into the cabbage. If the cabbage is too hot when the beaten egg goes in, the egg can scramble into small curds instead of blending smoothly. Lowering the heat first helps it thicken gently.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, butter, egg, cream, 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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