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Ways of Cooking Cabbage

A cabbage dish cooked in a white sauce made from milk, cornstarch, mace or nutmeg, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Ways of Cooking Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage in plenty of water, keeping it covered, or cut it up, remove the core, and steam it.

  2. When tender, chop the cabbage in a wooden bowl.

  3. Add vinegar to the boiling water to reduce odor.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a separate pot, thicken the milk with cornstarch and flavor with mace or nutmeg.

  2. Stir the chopped cabbage into the white sauce and beat until pulpy.

  3. Add the butter and keep hot until serving.

Alternative method

  1. For an alternative, cook cabbage with butter and flour in a frying pan until 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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 bulk of the dish and, when beaten, gives it a pulpy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a rounder flavor.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cabbage in the alternative frying-pan method.

The step that matters

Thickening the white sauce. Cornstarch must be cooked in the hot milk until it thickens; if undercooked, the sauce stays thin and tastes starchy. Stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, milk, egg, butter, flour, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, milk, egg, butter, flour, vinegar, 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.

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