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Ragooed Cabbage

A braised cabbage dish cooked with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and water.

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

Ragooed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Wash the savoy cabbage and boil it in salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the cabbage, drain it, and soak it in cold water for 10 minutes.

  3. Squeeze and drain the cabbage well, then remove the stalk.

Stew and serve

  1. Chop the cabbage slightly and place it in a stew pan with the butter.

  2. Add the flour, season with salt and pepper, and moisten with a little water.

  3. Let it stew slowly for 1 hour, then serve.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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, softening into a tender, melting texture as it stews.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the cabbage cook gently in fat without drying out.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the cabbage becomes a cohesive, lightly bound mixture.

The step that matters

Let it stew slowly for 1 hour. Slow, gentle heat lets the cabbage break down and absorb the butter and moisture evenly. Too much heat or too little liquid can scorch the flour and leave the dish dry or sticky.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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

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