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Ways of Cooking Cabbage

A method of cooking cabbage with a white sauce of milk, cornstarch, and butter, or frying it with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ways of Cooking Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage in plenty of water, keeping it covered, or cut it up, remove the core, and steam it.

  2. Once tender, chop the cabbage in a wooden bowl.

  3. Add vinegar to the boiling water to reduce odor.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a separate pot, heat the milk and thicken it with cornstarch, adding mace or nutmeg for flavor.

  2. Stir the chopped cabbage into the white sauce and beat until pulpy.

  3. Add the butter and keep hot.

Alternatives

  1. For an alternative, cook the cabbage in a frying pan with butter and flour until tender.

  2. For 'Kail cannon', mix cold cooked cabbage, mashed potatoes, sliced onions, and season with salt and pepper, then fry slowly in butter.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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. Vinegar + peppertop 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, once chopped and beaten, gives it a pulpy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, carrying the thickener and flavorings.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished dish a smoother mouthfeel.
Mace or nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the white sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be heated in liquid to swell and gelatinize; if the milk is not kept hot enough while stirring, the sauce stays thin or turns lumpy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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