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Cabbage and Cauliflowers

A simple boiled dish of cabbage and cauliflower seasoned with salt, milk, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage and Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Trim off the loose leaves of the cabbage and cut the stalk into quarters.

  2. Remove the outside leaves from the cauliflower and cut the stalk close to the leaves.

  3. Soak the cauliflower in salt and cold water for 30 minutes.

Boil

  1. Boil the cabbage in salted water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the cauliflower in a mixture of milk and water for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on size.

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 + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cauliflower + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender through long boiling.
Cauliflower
Forms the tender, mild-flavoured base of the dish when boiled until soft.
Milk
Adds a mild sweetness and creamy richness to the water used for boiling the cauliflower.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, milk. 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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