Name: Cabbage, Boiled
Ingredients: 1 head of young spring cabbage; 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (optional); 1 piece of stale bread (optional)

Why it works: Cabbage and bread work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 380 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cabbage, Boiled

Ingredients

1 head of young spring cabbage
2 tablespoons coarse sea salt
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (optional)
1 piece of stale bread (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Cut the stem of the cabbage across twice.

Boil

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the salt.
If desired, soak the cabbage in boiling water for 1 hour to reduce smell.
Add the cabbage to the boiling water.
Cook for 20 minutes, pressing it down occasionally.

Drain and serve

Strain the cabbage in a hot colander.
Press to remove excess water.
Serve immediately on a hot 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.

Cabbage + breadtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Young spring cabbage: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks in boiling water.
Coarse sea salt: Seasons the cooking water so the cabbage is flavoured as it boils.

“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.