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Tart Cabbage

A boiled cabbage dish thickened with flour, vinegar, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Tart Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the chopped cabbage in water until tender.

  2. When about 1 cup of water remains, add vinegar.

  3. In a small bowl, moisten flour with water and add to the pot.

  4. Stir in butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

  5. Boil until the mixture thickens slightly.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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 stew and softens as it boils until tender.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid as it heats, giving the stew a slightly thicker body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished stew.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Adding the moistened flour. Flour clumps if dropped in dry, so it must be mixed smoothly with water first. Stirring it into hot liquid then lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the stew without lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, flour, butter, pepper, sugar. 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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