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Curled Sayoy Cabbage

Boiled and sautéed savoy cabbage with butter, flour, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curled Sayoy Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outside leaves from the cabbage and cut them in half.

  2. Wash the cabbage in cold water and place it in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover it.

  3. Add the salt and boil the cabbage for 3 hours.

  4. Drain the cabbage in a colander.

Finish in the butter sauce

  1. In a large deep frying pan, mix the butter and flour with the hot water or beef broth.

  2. Place the cabbage cut side down in the pan and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Turn the cabbage over, spoon the butter mixture over it, and simmer for an additional 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cabbage + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 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

Savoy cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and absorbing the buttery sauce as it simmers.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the sauce coat the cabbage.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and broth mixture into a light sauce that clings to the cabbage.

The step that matters

Simmering the cabbage for 3 hours. A very long boil breaks down the cabbage's cell walls until it turns soft and loses much of its texture and colour. Checking tenderness and timing the boil carefully keeps the leaves soft but still holding their shape before the final simmer.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef. 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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