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A Dainty Dish of Cabbage

A boiled cabbage dish cooked with a slice of bread, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

A Dainty Dish of Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Boil

  1. Cut the cabbage into quarters.

  2. Boil the cabbage in water.

  3. When half done, place the slice of bread on top.

  4. Cook until the cabbage is tender.

Finish

  1. Remove the bread and season the cabbage with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Chop the cabbage finely.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into tender pieces as it boils.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavor through the finished cabbage.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, 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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