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Cabbages — Continued

A cabbage dish served with a sauce of vinegar, butter, salt, pepper, and egg yolks.

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 ↓

Cabbages — Continued

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage in plenty of cold water until tender.

  2. Cut the boiled cabbage into thin slices.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, water, butter, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks until smooth.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cold cabbage and serve with roasted meat or poultry.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich texture when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the rich sauce and the sweet cabbage.
White cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, the yolks can scramble into lumps, so removing the pan from heat first and stirring until smooth keeps the sauce silky.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, 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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