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Cabbage with Cheese

A baked casserole of boiled cabbage topped with a cheese sauce and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cabbage with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil chopped cabbage in salted water until tender, then drain.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour.

  2. Add milk and season to taste, then mix in grated cheese.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking pan, layer cabbage and cheese sauce until full.

  2. Top with bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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 casserole and becomes tender with boiling, giving the dish its body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the melted butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which sets creamy as it thickens.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness, and melts into the sauce.

The step that matters

Make the roux and sauce. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter and milk added gradually so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps. Stirring as the milk goes in keeps the starch evenly dispersed.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cheese, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cheese, bread. 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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