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Cabbage Au Gratin

A baked cabbage dish with onion, butter, vinegar, sugar, flour, paprika, and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,001 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and shred it finely.

  2. Place the shredded cabbage in a colander and pour boiling water over it to remove some color.

  3. Chop the onion finely.

Cook

  1. Fry the onion in hot fat or butter until soft.

  2. Add the cabbage and a little boiling water or stock.

  3. Season with salt and paprika.

  4. Cover the mixture.

  5. Cook until tender.

  6. Dissolve the flour in vinegar.

  7. Add the dissolved flour and sugar to the cabbage.

  8. Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  9. Serve hot.

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 + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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 + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 and soft during slow cooking.
Onion
Softens in hot fat and adds a sweet, savoury base flavour.
Flour
Dissolved in vinegar, it thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds mild sweetness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved flour and sugar to the cabbage. Flour lumps if added as dry powder, so it must be fully dissolved in the vinegar first. Stirring it in smoothly lets it thicken the liquid evenly rather than leaving clumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, vinegar, sugar, flour. 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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