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Stewed Cabbage

A cabbage dish simmered with butter, salt, soda, and white pepper, served with roast lamb or cutlets.

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

Why it works: Cabbage and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Stewed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stem from the cabbage and slice it.

  2. Wash the cabbage well and drain it.

Cook

  1. Boil the cabbage in a pan of salted water with a small amount of carbonate of soda for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain and press out the water from the cabbage.

Finish

  1. Chop the cabbage and place it in a saucepan with a piece of butter and a seasoning of white pepper.

  2. Stir gently over the heat until the butter is melted.

  3. Serve with roast lamb or cutlets.

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. Cabbage + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  3. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
The main vegetable, which softens into a tender, stewed texture as it cooks.
Carbonate of soda
An alkali that helps the cabbage soften and keeps its colour bright during boiling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the cabbage and giving it a smooth, moist finish.

The step that matters

Boiling with carbonate of soda. Only a small amount of carbonate of soda should be used. The alkali softens the cabbage and helps keep it green, but too much makes it mushy and can leave a soapy, unpleasant flavour. Draining and pressing out the water afterward keeps the finished dish from being watery.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Pepperfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, butter. 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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