Name: To Boil Young Green Cabbages
Ingredients: young green cabbages; coarse sea salt; melted butter

Why it works: Cabbage and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,397 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Boil Young Green Cabbages

Ingredients

young green cabbages
coarse sea salt
melted butter

Directions

Prepare

Wash and clean the cabbages well.

Cook and serve

Place them in boiling water with a little coarse sea salt.
Boil quickly for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Serve with melted butter.

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.

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

Young green cabbages: Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and mild as they cook.
Melted butter: Adds richness and a smooth fat coating to the cooked cabbage.

“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.