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Cabbage Pudding

A boiled cabbage dish filled with bacon, beef or mutton, bread, and butter, served with drawn butter.

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 ↓

Cabbage Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and cut out the inner top part.

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped bacon, chopped beef or mutton, crumbled bread, butter, salt, and black pepper.

  3. Stuff the cabbage with the meat and bread mixture, adding the cabbage you removed from the top.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the stuffed part with a cabbage leaf and tie it up in a cloth.

  2. Boil the cabbage for 4 hours.

  3. To make drawn butter, mix a thick paste and stir in 5 to 6 ounces of hot butter for every ½ cup of paste.

  4. Serve the cabbage pudding covered with drawn butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Cabbage + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the outer shell that holds the filling together while it cooks.
Bacon
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and flavourful as it cooks.
Beef or mutton
Provides savoury meat flavour and substance to the filling.
Bread
Soaks up fat and juices, helping bind the filling and keep it tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and the drawn butter sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the cabbage for 4 hours. Long, steady simmering breaks down the cabbage's tough fibres and lets the fat and meat tenderise. If the water boils too hard or runs low, the outside can fall apart or the pudding can dry out and cook unevenly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, butter, pepper):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, butter, pepper. 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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