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Hot Slaw

A warm cabbage salad made with butter, flour, sugar, egg, vinegar, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Hot Slaw

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 ↓

Hot Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a bowl three-fourths full of water.

  2. Add butter and heat until melted.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, sugar, beaten egg, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

Cook the slaw

  1. Combine the mixture with the melted butter and water, and cook until thick.

  2. Stir in the cabbage and cook for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 dish and softens and sweetens as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated with the water.
Beaten egg
Helps thicken the sauce as its proteins set when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until thick. The beaten egg can curdle or scramble if the mixture boils hard or heats too fast. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly so the egg thickens the sauce smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, vinegar, pepper, 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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