Skip to main content
Main

Cabbage, Plain Boiled

A simple boiled cabbage dish seasoned with salt and optionally finished with butter or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cabbage, Plain Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the cabbage by removing the outside leaves and cutting off the stalk.

  2. Cut the cabbage in half and soak it in salt water for a while.

Cook and serve

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the cabbage.

  2. Keep the water boiling and uncovered until the cabbage is tender, about 15-30 minutes depending on age.

  3. Strain the cabbage and serve immediately, adding butter or oil if desired.

  4. To help the butter adhere, sprinkle a little flour over the cabbage while mixing.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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 main body of the dish; cooking softens its fibres until tender.
Butter or oil
Adds richness and a smooth coating of fat that carries flavour over the cooked cabbage.
Flour
Lightly coats the cabbage so the melted butter clings to it more evenly.

The step that matters

Boiling until tender. Cabbage needs enough time in rapidly boiling water to soften its tough fibres, but overcooking breaks down its structure and produces a sulfurous smell and mushy texture. Check for tenderness across the range given, since younger and older heads differ.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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 boiled cabbage recipes

and Cauliflower 3 See all 153 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes