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Coulibiac

A baked cabbage and egg casserole with onions and butter.

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 ↓

Coulibiac

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Chop and fry the onions in butter until tender.

  2. Add chopped cabbages, season with salt and pepper, and stew until tender.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then mix in the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a thin fruit pie crust with puff pastry for the bottom and top.

  2. Fill the crust with the cabbage and egg mixture, cover with the top crust, and egg wash it.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbages
Forms the bulk of the filling and becomes soft and sweet as it stews.
Onions
Softened in butter, they add sweetness and savory depth to the filling.
Butter
Fat that softens the onions and carries flavor through the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling once cooled.
Puff pastry (in the method)
Forms the flaky, layered crust that rises and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cool the filling before assembling. Adding the eggs to a hot mixture or sealing warm filling inside pastry can make the pastry soggy and greasy as the moisture and fat soften it. Letting the mixture cool first keeps the layers crisp.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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