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Salad

Warm Slaw

A warm cabbage slaw cooked with butter, egg, sour cream, salt, and pepper.

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

Prepare

  1. Finely cut the cabbage.

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

Cook and finish

  1. Add the cabbage and a little water; simmer until tender.

  2. Beat the egg lightly and stir it in slowly.

  3. 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 main body of the dish and becomes tender as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor into the cabbage as it cooks.
Egg
Thickens the warm mixture gently and adds body when stirred in slowly.
Sour cream
Adds creaminess and a tangy acidity that balances the sweetness of cooked cabbage.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg slowly. Egg proteins set with heat and can scramble into lumps if added too quickly or left at high heat. Adding it slowly, off the heat or at low heat, lets it blend smoothly and thicken the mixture evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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