Skip to main content
Main

Cream Cabbage

Creamed cabbage is a cooked cabbage dish mixed with a creamy sauce of sour cream, eggs, butter, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cream Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Slice or chop the cabbage finely and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cook in a kettle with just enough water to prevent burning.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, beat together the sour cream, vinegar, and eggs.

  2. Add the butter and flour to the mixture and stir until smooth.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the cooked cabbage in the kettle.

  2. Let it boil once.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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 becomes tender as it cooks.
Sour cream
Adds richness and tang that give the sauce a creamy body.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps keep it smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the sour cream sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Letting the sauce boil once. Eggs in the sauce can curdle or turn grainy if overheated. Bringing it to a single boil thickens the flour and eggs while keeping the sauce smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, butter, flour, vinegar, egg. 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 creamed cabbage recipes

Salad 7 See all 121 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes