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Stewed Cabbage

A creamy stew of cabbage cooked with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Stewed Cabbage

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 ↓

Stewed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Wash the cabbage and cut it into quarters.

  2. Boil the cabbage in salted water until tender.

  3. Remove the cabbage and squeeze out excess water.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the cabbage in a stew pan with butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, flour, and cream.

  2. Stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Serve with the sauce 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes tender through boiling and stewing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stewed sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce that coats the cabbage.
Heavy cream
Supplies moisture and richness, forming the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Squeeze out excess water. Cabbage holds a lot of water. If it is not squeezed well before stewing, the extra liquid dilutes the cream and flour, leaving a thin sauce that does not cling to the cabbage.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, flour, cream. 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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