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Savoy Cabbage

A boiled Savoy cabbage dish seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice, cooked in beef broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Savoy Cabbage

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the cabbage into small pieces, removing the thick stems.

  2. Place in boiling water and boil slowly for 1 hour, adding beef broth to replace evaporated water.

  3. About 10 minutes before finishing, add butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  4. Do not drain any liquid; it contains valuable nutrients.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Savoy cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers slowly.
Beef broth
Adds savory flavor and replaces water lost to evaporation during the long simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished cabbage.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness that balances the richness of the butter and broth.

The step that matters

Keep enough liquid in the pot during the 1-hour boil. Cabbage cooked for a long time in water can dry out or scorch as liquid evaporates. Adding broth replaces lost water, and keeping the cooking liquid helps retain water-soluble flavor and nutrients.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, pepper, nutmeg, 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.

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