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Cabbage IX White Sauce

A cabbage dish simmered in a white sauce made from flour, butter, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cabbage IX White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cabbage into pieces 2 to 3 inches large.

  2. Place the cabbage in a covered saucepan with salt and cold water.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix flour with enough water to make a smooth thin paste, then add soft butter.

  2. Add the flour mixture to the saucepan.

  3. Boil until the cabbage is very tender.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cabbage + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

White cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and softens into tender pieces as it boils.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light white sauce as it heats.
Soft butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste to the saucepan. Flour mixed into a smooth paste first stays free of lumps. Dropped in dry or unevenly mixed, it clumps and the sauce turns grainy rather than smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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