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Scalloped Cabbage

A baked cabbage dish with butter, flour, milk, and buttered cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Scalloped Cabbage

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 ↓

Scalloped Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Soak the cabbage heads, sliced, for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the cabbage until tender, then drain and chop it coarsely.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan, add the flour and chopped cabbage, and cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring well.

  2. Add the milk and season with salt and pepper; simmer for 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Transfer to a baking dish, cover with buttered cracker crumbs, and bake until light brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and, once cooked, gives it its soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.
Buttered cracker crumbs
Form a golden, crisp topping as they brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter before adding the milk. Cooking the butter and flour together for a few minutes, while stirring, cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken the milk smoothly when it is added. Stirring well keeps lumps from forming.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, 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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