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French Way of Cooking Cabbage

A boiled cabbage sautéed with butter, pepper, salt, cream, and eggs, then browned in a pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

French Way of Cooking Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage until tender and let it drain until dry.

Make the mixture

  1. Stir in melted butter, pepper, salt, and cream.

  2. Heat the mixture, then add the beaten eggs.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered frying pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir until hot and browned underneath.

  2. Invert a hot dish over the pan.

  3. Turn it out to serve.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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

Eggs
Set when heated, binding the cabbage and cream into a soft, sliceable mass.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the mixture tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the underside brown in the pan.
White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish, its soft texture carrying the eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Stir until hot and browned underneath. Eggs set quickly once heated, so cooking too hard or too long makes them dry and rubbery. Stop once the base is set and lightly browned.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, egg. 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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