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Dressed Cabbage

A Savoy cabbage dish sautéed with butter, diced ham or bacon, seasoned, and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Dressed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the Savoy cabbage until tender, then drain and chop it finely.

Cook

  1. In a pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped cabbage to the pan and stir well.

  3. Dice the ham or bacon and add it to the cabbage.

  4. Season to taste and serve immediately while hot.

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. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Savoy cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the buttery flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the cabbage as it warms.
Cooked ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour and a meaty bite to the cabbage.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, 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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