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Cabbage, with White Sauce

A boiled cabbage dish finished with a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and sauce work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 437 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cabbage, with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove any dead or faded outer leaves from the cabbage.

  2. Cut off as much of the stalk as possible.

  3. Cut the cabbage across twice at the stalk end.

  4. If large, quarter the cabbage.

  5. Wash the cabbage well in cold water.

  6. Drain the cabbage.

Cook the cabbage

  1. In a large pot, bring plenty of water to a boil.

  2. Add the salt and baking soda to the boiling water.

  3. Add the cabbage to the boiling water.

  4. Stir the cabbage down once or twice.

  5. Boil the cabbage quickly for 8 minutes.

  6. Prepare another pot of boiling water.

  7. Add the same salt and soda mixture to the second pot.

  8. Transfer the cabbage to the second pot.

  9. Boil the cabbage for 15 minutes.

  10. Discard the water from the first pot.

  11. Refill the first pot with boiling water.

  12. Return the cabbage to the first pot.

  13. Boil for 10 minutes if small, or 20 minutes if large.

Serve

  1. Drain the cabbage in a colander.

  2. Press the cabbage well.

  3. Season the cabbage with pepper.

  4. Serve the cabbage in a hot vegetable dish.

  5. Cut the cabbage into squares.

  6. Pour the white sauce over the cabbage.

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 + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
The main vegetable; boiling softens its fibres so it becomes tender and easy to press.
White sauce
Adds moisture and richness, coating the cooked cabbage with a creamy fat-based layer.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping the cabbage soften faster and keep a brighter green colour.

The step that matters

Boil the cabbage quickly for 8 minutes. Keep the water at a full rolling boil when the cabbage goes in. Adding cabbage cools the water, so a strong boil is needed to cook it through quickly and keep it green rather than drab and waterlogged.

“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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