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Boiled Cabbage

A boiled cabbage dish seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and optionally salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and cut it into quarters, removing the stalk.

  2. Soak the cabbage in cold water for 1 hour.

Cook

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and cook the cabbage for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

  2. Add a scant ½ teaspoon of baking soda to speed up cooking and reduce odor.

  3. For German style, add a small piece of salt pork to the boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the cabbage and serve, or chop and season with salt, pepper, and butter.

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 + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Cabbage + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together919 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and turns soft and tender as its cell walls break down during boiling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the cooked cabbage and carrying its flavor.
Baking soda (in the method)
Raises the water's alkalinity, which speeds softening and can reduce sulfur odor.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda makes the water alkaline, which softens cabbage faster but can turn it mushy and dull its flavor if too much is used. That is why the amount is kept scant.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, pork. 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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