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Hot Slaw

A warm cabbage dish cooked with butter, eggs, sour cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Hot Slaw

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 ↓

Hot Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter and add the chopped cabbage.

  2. Sprinkle the cabbage with flour, salt, and pepper, and stir until the cabbage wilts.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then mix in the sour cream and vinegar.

  4. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet with the cabbage.

  5. Stir until the mixture reaches the consistency of thick cream.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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 as it wilts in the butter.
Eggs
Set when heated, thickening the mixture and giving it body.
Sour cream
Adds richness and tang, and keeps the sauce creamy rather than dry.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the cream and sugar.
Flour
Absorbs moisture from the cabbage and helps the sauce thicken smoothly.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the hot cabbage gently and continuously. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can curdle or turn grainy if they get too hot or are left unstirred. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the sauce thickens into a smooth cream.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, vinegar, egg, sugar, walnut, butter, flour. 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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