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Cabbages, with Cream

A cabbage dish simmered with butter, spices, flour, and cream, served optionally with sausages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cabbages, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbages in well-salted water until tender.

  2. Remove them, press out excess water, and cut them coarsely.

Make the creamed cabbage

  1. In a stewpan, combine the cabbages with butter, spices, and flour.

  2. Moisten the mixture with cream and stir well.

Serve

  1. Serve the dish surrounded by sausages, if desired.

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

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

  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 + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Cabbage + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Cabbages
Form the bulk of the dish and carry the flavour of the cream and butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the cabbage a smooth, rounded texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter so the mixture clings to the cabbage.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, turning the mixture creamy when stirred in.

The step that matters

Pressing out the excess water. Cabbage holds a lot of water after boiling. If it is not pressed dry, the cream will thin out and the flour will not thicken the mixture properly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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