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Boiled Cabbage

Boiled cabbage seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the leaves from the cabbage, breaking them off close to the stalk.

  2. Soak the leaves in a large pan of cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil and add 1 teaspoon of salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Dry each leaf with a towel and drop them into the boiling water, ensuring not to overcrowd the pan.

  2. Cook uncovered until tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the cabbage in a colander and chop lightly with a knife and fork.

  4. Transfer to a hot dish, season with salt, pepper, and butter, and serve.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. 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, turning tender and mild when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the finished cabbage.

The step that matters

Cooking the leaves without overcrowding the pan. Adding too many leaves at once drops the water temperature and slows its return to a boil, so the cabbage cooks unevenly and can turn soggy. Keeping the water boiling helps the leaves become tender quickly.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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