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Salad

Cabbage Slaw

A salad of shredded cabbage with onion, green pepper, vinegar, sugar, salt, cayenne, white pepper, sour cream, and bacon drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cabbage Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage and soak it in cold water until crisp.

  2. Drain the cabbage and mix it with the chopped onion and green pepper.

Dress and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, combine vinegar, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, and white pepper.

  2. Add the vinegar mixture and sour cream to the cabbage mixture and stir well.

  3. Serve plain in dishes.

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. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the crisp bulk of the slaw, and soaking in cold water firms its texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sour cream
Adds richness and creaminess, coating the vegetables into a moist dressing.
Green pepper
Adds fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour and some crunch.

The step that matters

Drain the cabbage after soaking. Cabbage left wet dilutes the dressing and makes the slaw watery. Draining well keeps the sour cream mixture thick and the cabbage crisp.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, pepper, vinegar, sugar, cream):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, pepper, vinegar, sugar, cream. 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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