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Creamed Cabbage

A cabbage dish cooked with butter, flour, salt, and a frothy cream and vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage.

  2. Shred the cabbage with a knife or slaw cutter.

  3. Soak the shredded cabbage in cold water until crisp.

  4. Drain the cabbage.

Cook the cabbage

  1. Heat the butter in a deep frying pan.

  2. Add the drained cabbage to the pan.

  3. Sprinkle the cabbage with salt.

  4. Cover and cook over medium heat until tender, about 25 minutes.

  5. Dredge the cabbage with flour.

Make the cream sauce and finish

  1. Beat the cream until frothy.

  2. Mix the vinegar into the cream.

  3. Pour the cream mixture over the cabbage.

  4. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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 dish and becomes tender during slow covered cooking.
Soured cream
Adds tangy richness and moisture that forms a creamy sauce around the cabbage.
Flour
Dredged over the cabbage to thicken the cream sauce as it heats.
Butter
Fat for the pan that adds richness and helps the cabbage soften without sticking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich cream.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes after adding the cream. Once the cream is added, boiling thickens the flour-based sauce; the cream can curdle or separate if heated too hard, so watch the heat closely.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, butter, vinegar. 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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