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To Boil Cabbages

A simple boiled cabbage dish seasoned with salt, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

To Boil Cabbages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the stems and remove decayed and outer leaves from the cabbage.

  2. Soak the cabbage in salt water for 1 hour with the stem side up.

  3. Divide the cabbage into four sections, keeping the stem intact.

Boil

  1. Boil water in a pot and add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Add the cabbage to the boiling water and leave the pot uncovered, skimming occasionally.

  3. Boil for 45 minutes, then remove the cabbage and discard the water.

  4. Replace with clean boiling water and boil for an additional 45 minutes until tender.

Serve

  1. Drain the cabbage in a hot colander, cut off the stem, and serve in quarters with butter and a sprinkle of pepper and salt.

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

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

  3. Cabbage + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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; boiling softens its leaves until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that coats the warm cabbage, softening its flavour.

The step that matters

Discarding the first boiling water. The first 45-minute boil draws out bitter compounds and some cabbage odour; replacing the water with clean boiling water prevents these from being reabsorbed and keeps the flavour mild.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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