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Cabbage a LA Creme

A creamy sauce of butter, flour, and cream coats boiled cabbage, finished with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Cabbage a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage in salted water until almost done but not quite tender.

  2. Drain the cabbage thoroughly to remove all moisture.

  3. Cut the cabbage lengthwise into several pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stew‑pan, adjusting the amount based on the size of the cabbage.

  2. Add salt, white pepper, and flour to the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the cream, using at least 1 cup.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the cabbage pieces to the sauce and cook until perfectly tender.

  2. Arrange the cabbage on a dish and garnish with fried croutons.

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. Butter + creamtop 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 + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. White pepper + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes

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 body of the dish and becomes tender as it cooks in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding richness and a silky texture.

The step that matters

Drain the cabbage thoroughly. Excess water left on the cabbage dilutes the cream sauce and stops it from thickening properly, leaving it thin and watery.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, butter, flour, cream. 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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