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Ladies' Cabbage

A baked cabbage dish mixed with eggs, butter, milk, and seasonings.

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 ↓

Ladies' Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage in water for 15 minutes, then replace the water with more from the boiling kettle.

  2. Once tender, drain the cabbage and let it cool completely.

Assemble and bake

  1. Chop the cabbage finely and mix in the beaten eggs, butter, pepper, salt, and milk or cream.

  2. Stir everything together and pour into a buttered pudding dish.

  3. Bake until brown and serve very hot.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the chopped cabbage together and set into a firm, sliceable bake as they cook.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the eggs tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish, giving texture and mild sweetness once cooked.

The step that matters

Let the cabbage cool completely before mixing. Hot cabbage would begin cooking the beaten eggs unevenly and thin the mixture, so it should be cool before the eggs go in. Draining well also keeps excess water from diluting the custard-like set.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, milk. 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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