Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Cabbage

A cabbage dish stuffed with turkey stuffing, boiled, then simmered in cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Stuffed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut a square out of the center of the cabbage and set it aside.

  2. Tie the outer leaves around the square piece.

Cook and fill

  1. Boil the cabbage in salted water until fully cooked, then remove it from the water.

  2. Chop the square piece of cabbage and mix it with the turkey stuffing.

  3. Fill the cabbage with the stuffing and place it in a pot.

Simmer

  1. Add the cream and butter, then let it simmer until most of the milk is absorbed.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Turkey + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Turkey + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

  5. Cabbage + turkeytop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 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

Outer cabbage leaves
Form a wrapper that holds the stuffing together during cooking.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and moisture, and thickens slightly as it reduces.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, savory flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering in the cream. Cream can scorch or boil over if the heat is too high. Gentle simmering lets the liquid reduce slowly and thicken without burning on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, cream, butter. 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.

More stuffed cabbage recipes

Turkish 4 See all 77 →

You might also like

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes