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Escalloped Cabbage

A cabbage dish boiled, combined with a flour and butter sauce, and baked under buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage 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 ↓

Escalloped Cabbage

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cabbage into pieces, not very fine.

  2. Boil the cabbage in salted water for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the cabbage.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir.

  3. Gradually add milk, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cook until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the cabbage in a buttered baking dish.

  2. Mix the cabbage with the sauce.

  3. Cover with a layer of buttered breadcrumbs.

  4. Bake for 15 minutes.

  5. Add 4 chopped hard-boiled eggs to the sauce.

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. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cabbagetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, cohesive sauce that clings to the cabbage.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor into the sauce and coating the dish.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish, softened by boiling before it is baked in the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until smooth. Adding the milk gradually to the melted butter and flour keeps the starch from clumping. Cooking the mixture until smooth lets the flour fully thicken the liquid, giving an even sauce instead of lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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