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Creamed Cabbage

A cabbage dish cooked with cream, flour, and milk, thickened into a creamy side.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Chop the cabbage and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Cover the cabbage with about half water and boil until tender.

  3. Remove the cover and let the water boil out.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Stir in the cream, salt, and pepper.

  2. Once it boils, add the flour mixed with the milk.

  3. Let it boil slowly for five minutes or until thickened.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 and sweet as it cooks in water.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce when heated with it, giving body to the cream.
Milk
Mixed with the flour to make a smooth slurry that thins the paste before it goes into the pan.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and milk mixture. Flour clumps if added dry or without being smoothly mixed with liquid first. Mixing it with milk before adding it, then boiling gently, lets starch granules swell evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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