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Cream Cabbage

Cream Cabbage is a cooked cabbage dish with cream, butter, flour, vinegar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. Slice the cabbage and cook it in a saucepan with just enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and cook until tender, then drain any excess water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream or milk, butter, flour, vinegar, and eggs until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture over the cooked cabbage in the saucepan.

  3. Let it boil briefly and 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Set and thicken the cream mixture as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid dairy mixture so it coats the cabbage rather than running off.
Cream or milk
Provides the liquid base and richness of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rich flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich dairy sauce.

The step that matters

Let it boil briefly. Eggs in the cream mixture can curdle or scramble if overheated, so the sauce should be heated only until it thickens and then served promptly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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