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Cream Cabbage

A cabbage dish topped with a boiled cream and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage 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 ↓

Cream Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks, sugar, vinegar, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and stir over medium heat until it boils.

  3. Stir in the cream and let it boil again.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the cooked cabbage.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

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

  4. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook and give it a rich, creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and smooth body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth texture and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and let it boil again. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if overheated or boiled too hard. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than curdling.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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