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Italian Cabbage

Layered cabbage cooked with butter, cheese, flour, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Italian Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cabbage until tender, then strain and press it dry.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

Layer and cook

  1. Chop the cabbage and layer it in the saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle grated cheese, pepper, and salt over the cabbage.

  3. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

  4. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer to 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.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

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 casserole and, once tender and pressed dry, gives its body to the layers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the cabbage as it simmers.
Dry cheese
Adds salty, savoury flavour and melts slightly into the layers as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the buttery juices so the layers hold together rather than running loose.

The step that matters

Pressing the cabbage dry. Excess water left in boiled cabbage dilutes the butter and flour and makes the layers soggy, so the cabbage should be squeezed well after straining.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, flour, pepper. 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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