Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Cabbage

A simple cabbage dish cooked with butter, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage until tender.

  2. Squeeze the boiled cabbage very dry.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Season the melted butter with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Add the cabbage to the saucepan and cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cabbage neatly in a hot dish and serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 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 carries the buttery seasoning.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the cabbage and carrying the seasoning.

The step that matters

Squeezing the boiled cabbage very dry. Excess water left in the cabbage dilutes the butter and makes the dish soggy and watery instead of coated and tender. Removing it lets the cabbage absorb the butter and seasoning and stew properly in the pan.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon. 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 stewed cabbage recipes

Spanish 4 See all 68 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes