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Creamed Cabbage

Creamed cabbage is a dish of boiled cabbage mixed with cream, butter, sugar, salt, pepper, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Creamed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. Slice the cabbage as for coleslaw and cook in boiling salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Alternatively, cook the cabbage in salted boiling water, covered, for 15 minutes.

Finish in cream

  1. Drain the cabbage and place it in a saucepan with cream, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Let it simmer for 3 minutes and serve.

Thicken and serve

  1. Pour off the water, add hot milk, and when tender, mix in butter and flour combined with milk.

  2. Season, bring to a boil, and serve.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 turns tender as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the cabbage a smooth, silky coating.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that, with flour, becomes the creamy sauce.
Sugar
Adds a mild sweetness that balances the cabbage's natural bitterness.

The step that matters

Combine the flour with milk before adding it. Flour added dry to hot liquid clumps as its starch hits the heat unevenly. Mixing it smoothly with cold or cool milk first lets the starch disperse, so the sauce thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, sugar, pepper, milk, 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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