Name: Savoy Cabbage
Ingredients: Savoy cabbage; ½ cup milk; ½ cup water

Why it works: Cabbage and milk work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 599 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Savoy Cabbage

Ingredients

Savoy cabbage
½ cup milk
½ cup water

Directions

Cook the cabbage

Cook the Savoy cabbage in water until half done.
Drain the water and return the cabbage to the pot.
Add ½ cup milk and ½ cup water, then cook until fully done.

Finish

Dress the cabbage as you would cauliflower.

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.

Cabbage + milktop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together599 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Savoy cabbage: Provides the main body; its leaves soften as they cook while keeping some texture.
Milk: Adds fat and dairy richness that softens the cabbage's sharp, bitter edge.

“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.