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Baked Cabbage

A baked cabbage dish with milk, eggs, butter, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Cabbage

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Quarter the cabbage and place it in cold water.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, then drain.

  3. Pour enough boiling water to cover the cabbage and boil for an additional 20 minutes.

  4. Remove, drain, and chop the cabbage finely.

Make the mixture

  1. Season with coarse sea salt and add the butter.

  2. Beat together the milk and eggs, then mix with the cabbage.

Bake

  1. Transfer to a pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until browned.

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

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cabbage + milktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together599 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cabbage + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 gives it its body and mild flavour.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the chopped cabbage into a firm, sliceable custard-like mass.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the set eggs, keeping the dish tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and improving flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the cabbage well after boiling. Excess water dilutes the milk and egg mixture and stops it setting properly, leaving the bake wet and loose instead of firm.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter. 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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