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Baked Cabbage with Ham

A baked cabbage dish with ham, butter, and cheese, served with roast ham slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Cabbage with Ham

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. Boil the cabbage until tender.

  2. Press out the water.

Bake and serve

  1. Mix the cabbage with drawn butter in a baking pan.

  2. Sprinkle grated cheese and diced ham over the cabbage.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until heated through and cheese is melted.

  4. Serve with a slice of roast ham on top.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Cabbage + hamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. 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 and softens when boiled, becoming tender enough to bake.
Drawn butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cabbage carry flavour and brown lightly in the oven.
Grated cheese
Melts over the cabbage to add savoury flavour and a creamy, browned topping.
Diced ham
Adds salty, savoury meat flavour throughout the baked cabbage.

The step that matters

Press out the water. Cabbage holds a lot of water after boiling. Pressing it out keeps the dish from turning soggy and lets the butter and cheese coat the cabbage instead of diluting in liquid.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, ham. 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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