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Creamed Cabbage

Shredded cabbage boiled until tender, then finished with cream thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare

  1. Slice the cabbage finely using a slaw cutter.

Cook the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage until tender and the water has evaporated.

  2. Add salt and pepper.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Add the cream thickened with flour.

  2. Stir until smooth.

  3. Cook for a few moments.

Serve

  1. Add vinegar if desired 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.

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. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 becomes tender when boiled.
Heavy cream
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy texture for the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce by swelling with heat.

The step that matters

Stir the cream and flour until smooth. Flour clumps if it is added to hot liquid without being evenly dispersed first. Stirring it smoothly into the cream and cooking briefly lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, flour, vinegar. 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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