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Cabbage, with Cheese and Eggs

A cabbage dish cooked with butter or white sauce, cheese, and hard-boiled eggs, seasoned with cayenne, nutmeg, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cabbage, with Cheese and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbages until tender, then press and chop them roughly.

Combine and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped cabbages with butter or white sauce and stir for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into 6 or 8 pieces and add them to the saucepan.

  3. Stir in the grated cheese, cayenne, nutmeg, and black pepper.

  4. Serve hot as soon as the cheese melts.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together187 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Young cabbages
Provide the main bulk and mild flavour once boiled until tender.
Butter or white sauce
Adds fat and moisture, coating the cabbage and carrying the seasonings.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add rich, soft body and protein-based texture to the mixture.
Grated cheese
Melts into the warm mixture, adding savoury flavour and creaminess.

The step that matters

Serve as soon as the cheese melts. Cheese becomes stringy, greasy and separates when overheated for too long, so it should be served promptly once it has just melted into the warm mixture.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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