Name: Stewed Cabbage
Ingredients: 1 head of cabbage; ½ cup boiling water; salt to taste; a few spoonfuls of cream

Why it works: Cabbage and cream work together. They rank in the top 31% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 778 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Stewed Cabbage

Ingredients

1 head of cabbage
½ cup boiling water
salt to taste
a few spoonfuls of cream

Directions

Prepare

Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and cut it in half.
Slice the cabbage finely, omitting the heart.

Cook and finish

Place the cabbage in a saucepan with boiling water and a little salt.
Cover the saucepan and cook until tender, adding more hot water if it becomes too dry.
Once tender, stir in a few spoonfuls of cream and heat through before serving.

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.

Cabbage + creamtop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together778 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 softens as it cooks, becoming tender and mild.
Cream: Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the cooked cabbage.

“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.