Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cabbage Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Chop the cabbage finely or shred it.
Pour the boiling milk over the cabbage.
Dress and toss
Add the butter and sugar to the mixture.
Toss everything together until well combined.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cabbage + milktop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together599 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Cabbage + buttertop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,397 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 salad and provides its crisp, fresh texture.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and a creamy richness to the cabbage.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richer flavour and a smoother mouthfeel.
- White sugar
- Adds sweetness that balances the savoury cabbage.
Swap the cabbage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar):
- Potatofits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Cabbagethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar. 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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