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Cream Cabbage

A creamy cabbage dish made with vinegar, milk, eggs, mustard, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix together the vinegar, sugar, mustard, butter, salt, and celery seed.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring continuously.

  4. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture along with enough flour to achieve a thick cream consistency.

Add the cabbage

  1. Add the chopped cabbage and bring the mixture back to a boil.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set with heat, giving it a creamy body.
Flour
Helps thicken the cream so it holds together rather than running thin.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, giving it richness and smoothness.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the milk and eggs.
Cabbage
Provides the main vegetable and bulk of the dish.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and eggs. Adding cold milk or eggs to a hot, acidic mixture too quickly can cause curdling or lumps. Adding the milk gradually while stirring, and beating the eggs well before blending them in, keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, milk, egg, flour, sugar, mustard, 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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