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Cabbage, Boiled

A boiled cabbage dish seasoned with salt, baking soda, stale bread, butter, flour, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cabbage, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the stem of the cabbage across twice.

  2. Soak the cabbage in boiling water for 20 minutes, ensuring it is fully submerged.

  3. Strain the cabbage using a hot colander and press it to remove excess water.

Cook and serve

  1. In a clean saucepan, add the cabbage with a small piece of butter.

  2. Dredge a little flour while stirring to help the butter adhere.

  3. Add a little vinegar and a pinch of sugar before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour 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

Young spring cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the butter and seasonings.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating that helps the cabbage feel moist and smooth.
Flour
Lightly thickens the butter and juices so they cling to the cabbage instead of pooling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Pressing the cabbage after straining. Excess water left in the cabbage dilutes the butter and flour, so the coating turns thin and watery rather than clinging to the leaves.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, flour, vinegar, sugar. 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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