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Cabbage Pudding

A baked dish of boiled cabbage mixed with butter, milk, eggs, and seasonings, topped with crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Select a firm head of cabbage and boil it until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Drain the cabbage and chop it finely.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped cabbage with butter, milk, beaten eggs, pepper, salt, and mustard if desired.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding dish and top with rolled crackers.

  3. Bake until the eggs and milk are set.

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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds together when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard with the eggs, keeping the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a softer texture and flavor.
White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pudding and provides its main vegetable flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until the eggs and milk are set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the pudding runny, while overbaking can make it rubbery and weeping.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, butter, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, butter, milk, egg, 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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