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Braised Cabbage

Braised cabbage cooked with butter, flour, stock, and meat extract until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Braised Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the heart of the cabbage in cold water with salt for 2 minutes, then strain.

Braise

  1. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and cook the cabbage for a few minutes.

  2. Sprinkle the cabbage with flour, then add the brown stock and meat extract.

  3. Simmer until the cabbage is tender.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cabbage + meattop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cabbage + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness as the cabbage cooks in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce as it meets the stock.
Brown stock
Provides the liquid that braises the cabbage and carries its flavour.
Meat extract
Adds concentrated savoury depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Adding the flour before the stock. Flour sprinkled over the cabbage and then mixed with liquid thickens the sauce smoothly; adding it all at once to hot liquid can clump. Letting it cook briefly in the butter helps it thicken evenly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, meat):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, meat. 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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