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Boiled Cabbage

A simple boiled cabbage dish seasoned with salt, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Boiled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Cut the cabbage into small pieces.

  2. Boil the cabbage in salted water until tender.

  3. Pour off the water.

Finish

  1. Add a walnut-sized lump of butter and milk to the cabbage.

  2. Cook slowly for a few 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Cabbage + milktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together599 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and softens into a tender vegetable when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the cooked cabbage.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, helping the cabbage become creamy as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Pour off the water. Cabbage releases sulfur compounds and bitter flavours into cooking water, and draining it before adding butter and milk keeps the finished dish milder and less watery.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, butter, milk. 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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