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Creamed Cabbage

A cabbage dish cooked in butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Creamed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. Fill a large kettle half full with boiling water and add 1 teaspoon salt for each quart of water.

  2. When the water boils again, add the cabbage and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the cabbage and drain it carefully.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in the kettle.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and stir until smooth and cooked.

  3. Gradually add ½ cup of milk and stir until it boils for 2 minutes.

  4. Add ½ teaspoon salt.

  5. Let the cabbage simmer in the sauce for 1 minute.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 main body of the dish and absorbs the creamy sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it body and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the flour and butter. Milk added all at once to a hot roux can clump. Adding it gradually while stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce turns smooth. Boiling it for two minutes then cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the sauce.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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