Skip to main content
Baking

Baked Cabbage

A baked cabbage dish layered with a butter‑flour sauce seasoned with vinegar, salt, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Baked Cabbage

Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Baked Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cabbage coarsely and parboil in salted water for 45 minutes.

  2. Drain the cabbage and place it in a baking dish in alternating layers with the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. To make the sauce, blend the flour and butter in a pan.

  2. Add boiling water until the sauce reaches the desired consistency.

  3. Season the sauce with vinegar, salt, and paprika.

Finish

  1. If the cabbages are small, they can be boiled whole or simply scored across the top.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and holds the sauce between its layers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps carry flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when blended with butter and liquid.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that balances the rich sauce.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar. 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.

More baked cabbage recipes

with Eggs 3 See all 55 →

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes