Name: Cabbage with Apples
Ingredients: 1 large cabbage, chopped finely; ¼ cup water; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons drippings; 2 tablespoons butter; 3 large or 5 small cooking apples, peeled and sliced; Juice of ½ lemon; 1 tablespoon flour

Why it works: Cabbage and apple work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage with Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the cabbage very finely.

Cook

Boil the cabbage in a little water with salt, drippings, and butter until half done.
Add the sliced apples to the cabbage and cook until the apples are tender.
Mix the lemon juice with flour, pour over the cabbage and apples, and let boil for a while longer.

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.

Cabbage + appletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together235 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cabbage + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together397 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 becomes tender as it simmers in the liquid.
Cooking apples: Add sweetness and acidity that balance the cabbage and soften into the dish.
Flour: Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that coats the cabbage and apples.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the cabbage.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice and flour mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with the lemon juice before it goes into the pot; added as dry lumps it forms clumps that never fully thicken the liquid. Letting it boil afterward activates the starch so the sauce thickens.

Swap the cabbage

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

Arrowrootfits better
Shallotfits better
Parsnipfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple, lemon, flour. 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.

More cabbage with apples recipes

Red 4

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Red Cabbage65 recipes

Stewed Cabbage58 recipes

Baked Cabbage51 recipes

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Cabbage with Apples