Name: Boiled Cabbage
Ingredients: 1 head of cabbage; Salt; Butter

Why it works: Cabbage and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,397 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Boiled Cabbage

Ingredients

1 head of cabbage
Salt
Butter

Directions

Prepare

Remove the loose outer leaves from the cabbage and cut it in half.
Place the halves cut side up in a pan and cover with salt water for a few minutes to remove any insects.

Boil and serve

Transfer the cabbage to a kettle with boiling water, ensuring it is fully submerged, and add sufficient salt.
Boil until tender, then drain in a colander.
Place the cabbage in a hot dish and cover with slices of 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.

Cabbage + buttertop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,397 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage: Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through boiling.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the hot cabbage.

“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.