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Baked Cabbage

A baked cabbage dish with a milk, butter, and flour sauce and breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Baked Cabbage

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 ↓

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. Soak the cabbage in cold water with a little salt.

  2. Drain and boil in slightly salted water for 10 minutes, uncovered.

  3. Drain again.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a sauce with milk, butter, and flour.

  2. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the cabbage with crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main body of the dish and becomes tender as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps carry flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth sauce.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Forms a topping that browns and adds a crisp texture in the oven.

The step that matters

Drain the cabbage well after boiling. Excess water left on the cabbage thins the sauce and makes the baked dish soggy, so draining thoroughly keeps the sauce thick and the topping crisp.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, pepper, 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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