Skip to main content
Main

Delicate Cabbage

A boiled cabbage dish seasoned with salt, butter, and pepper, sometimes served with cream dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Delicate Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all defective leaves from the cabbage.

  2. Quarter and cut the cabbage into pieces for slaw.

  3. Cover the cabbage with cold water and let it soak for several hours.

  4. Drain the cabbage.

Boil

  1. Place the cabbage in a pot with enough boiling water to cover it.

  2. Boil the cabbage for about 45 minutes until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Add salt 10 to 15 minutes before removing from heat.

  4. Transfer the cooked cabbage to a colander.

  5. Press out the excess water from the cabbage.

Season and serve

  1. Season the cabbage with butter and pepper before serving.

  2. Mix in some of the cooking liquid and fat from corned meats if desired.

  3. Serve the cabbage in a dish with drawn butter or a cream dressing poured over it.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

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

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 and sweet as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooked cabbage.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cabbage during boiling so flavor penetrates the leaves.

The step that matters

Boil the cabbage for about 45 minutes until thoroughly cooked. Cabbage needs a long, steady boil to soften its tough cell walls fully. Stopping early leaves it firm and bitter-tasting, while overcooking releases sulfurous compounds that give a strong odor.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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 boiled cabbage recipes

and Cauliflower 3 See all 153 →

You might also like

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