Skip to main content
Baking

Baked Cabbage with Cheese

A baked casserole of cooked cabbage layered with tomatoes, cheese, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Baked Cabbage with Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Layer and season

  1. Fill a well-oiled baking dish with alternate layers of tomatoes and cabbage.

  2. Season each layer with salt and pepper to taste.

Top and bake

  1. Sprinkle the top with cheese and cracker crumbs.

  2. Dot the top layer of crumbs with butter.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + tomatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Tomato + cheesetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes tender as it bakes in the layers.
Canned tomatoes
Adds moisture and acidity that soften the cabbage and flavour the layers.
Cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding richness and a golden crust.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and toast on top to give a crisp, browned finish.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the crumbs brown and enriches the top layer.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cheese, 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.

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes