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To Boil Cabbage

A boiled cabbage dish cooked in salted water, drained, reboiled, tied, and served with rich drawn butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage heads and cut them into quarters without cutting all the way through.

Boil

  1. Place the cabbage in a pot and cover with water. Add the salt and bring to a boil.

  2. Boil for 1 hour, then drain the water and add fresh hot water without salt.

  3. Boil for an additional hour.

Serve

  1. Tie the cabbage loosely with a strong cord and place in a hot dish.

  2. Prepare a rich drawn butter and pour it over the cabbage before serving.

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 + 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

Early york cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it cooks slowly in water.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the cabbage to give it a smooth, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Draining and refilling with fresh water. Pouring off the salted water and adding fresh unsalted water after the first hour keeps the cabbage from tasting overly salty while it finishes cooking.

“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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