Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cabbage Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cabbage
Partly boil the cabbage pieces.
Squeeze the boiled cabbage pieces dry.
Place the cabbage in a large pan, ensuring space between each piece.
Cover the cabbage with veal gravy or stock and stew for 2 hours.
Make the gravy
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the flour. Add the minced onions. Stir the mixture again. Pour in the veal gravy. Bring the mixture to a brief boil.
Pour the gravy mixture over the cabbage.
Add the meats and serve
If using, fry the pigeons. Stew the fried pigeons with the cabbage.
Add bacon with cloves. Remove excess fat.
Soak bread in the gravy. Place the soaked bread in the dish, with the fowl in the center and cabbage around it.
Garnish with bacon slices and a little cabbage between each slice.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,001 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cabbage + clovetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together933 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together16,901 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
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 and sweet during long stewing.
- Butter
- Adds richness and carries flavor through the gravy.
- Flour
- Thickens the butter and onion mixture into a smooth gravy.
- Onions
- Add aromatic sweetness that deepens the flavor of the gravy.
- Veal gravy or stock
- Provides the liquid that braises the cabbage and forms the savory base.
The step that matters
Stir the flour into the melted butter before adding liquid. Cooking flour in fat, a roux, lets starch granules coat evenly so the gravy thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps when the liquid is added.
Swap the clove
The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, veal, butter, flour, onion, meat, bread):
- Capersfits better
- Garlicfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, veal, butter, flour, onion, meat, bread. 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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