Skip to main content
Side

Cabbage with Cream Dressing

A side dish of boiled cabbage served with a cream and butter dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cabbage with Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and quarter it.

  2. Boil the cabbage in salted water until almost tender, then drain in a colander.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a pot, add the cream and bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the cream with butter and flour, stirring until a cream.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg if desired.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes tender through boiling.
Rich cream
Provides richness and the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and combines with flour to thicken the cream.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Thicken the cream with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked with butter and stirred steadily as the cream heats. Stirring keeps lumps from forming, and gentle cooking lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

Eggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipesOnion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipes