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Cabbage, Minced

A sautéed cabbage dish flavored with butter, flour, vinegar, salt, pepper, and garnished with hard‑boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cabbage, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cabbage, then press it dry and chop it finely.

Cook

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan, sprinkle in the flour, and mix smoothly.

  2. Add the chopped cabbage to the pan.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then add the vinegar.

  4. Stir over the heat for 5 to 6 minutes, then serve garnished with sections of hard-boiled egg.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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, so it sets the bulk and texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cabbage coat and cook evenly in the pan.
Flour
Mixed into the hot butter to form a roux that thickens the dish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cooked cabbage.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour smoothly into the butter. Flour added to hot fat must be mixed well, or it clumps instead of forming an even roux, leaving lumps and uneven thickening.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar, pepper, egg. 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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