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Winter Cabbage

A boiled cabbage dish seasoned with salt, pepper, and melted 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 ↓

Winter Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cabbage into quarters and soak in salted cold water for a short time, trimming off the outer leaves and stalk.

  2. Drain the cabbage well and place it in a large pot of boiling water with ½ cup of coarse sea salt per gallon of water.

Cook

  1. Boil gently, covered, for 10 minutes, then remove from heat and drain the water.

  2. Re-cover with salted boiling water and boil for 1 hour or more until tender, without covering the pot after the first 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Drain thoroughly and dress with melted butter, pepper, and salt, or chop coarsely and cover with a rich cream sauce.

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, becoming tender and mild as it cooks.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooked cabbage.

The step that matters

Cooking until fully tender. Cabbage needs a long, gentle boil to break down its tough fibres and turn tender. Stopping early leaves it firm and sulphurous in flavour, and an uncovered pot after the first 10 minutes lets volatile sulphur compounds escape, which keeps the taste milder.

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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