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White Cabbage Stewed

A stew of white cabbage cooked with milk, butter, flour, 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: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

White Cabbage Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. Prepare the cabbage and place it in a saucepan with the milk and butter.

  2. Stew until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Moisten the flour with a little cold milk and stir it into the milk and butter.

  2. Add salt and white pepper, then bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the sauce over the cabbage.

  4. Transfer to a hot serving dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes tender and sweet as it stews.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth sauce that clings to the cabbage.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the stew and the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the milk and sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the milk and butter. Flour added without first being moistened in cold milk can form lumps that do not dissolve. Moistening it first lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly when it heats.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, flour, milk, 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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