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White Cabbage

A cooked white cabbage served with a sauce of flour, stock or cream, seasoned with salt and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

White Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove outer green leaves from the cabbage and cut the cabbage into quarters.

  2. Soak the cabbage in cold water for 1 hour.

Cook the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage in hot water for 10-15 minutes, then drain the water.

  2. Refill with boiling water, add salt, and boil until tender.

  3. Drain well.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Heat drippings or butter in a pan and stir in the flour slowly.

  2. Add beef stock or cream.

  3. Season with white pepper and salt.

  4. Pour over the cabbage.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cabbage + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cabbage + white peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long boiling.
Flour
Thickens the drippings or butter into a smooth sauce that coats the cabbage.
Drippings or butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the roux that begins the sauce.
Beef stock or cream
Supplies the liquid that loosens the thickened base into a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour slowly. Adding flour gradually to hot fat and stirring constantly lets the starch coat each grain evenly, preventing lumps and forming a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, flour, butter, beef. 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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