Skip to main content
Main

Cabbage with Cream

A simple cabbage dish cooked with butter, flour, cream, pepper, salt, and optional egg yolk.

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

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 ↓

Cabbage with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage until tender, then drain and chop it.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Stir in the flour or rice flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the cream, pepper, and salt, and mix well.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir in the chopped cabbage and heat until very hot.

  2. If desired, mix in the egg yolk before serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 dish and carries the creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Provides moisture and a rich, silky texture to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce when mixed in.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour for a minute in melted butter removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the cream evenly without lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, pepper, egg. 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 creamed cabbage recipes

Salad 7 See all 121 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes