I cook a lot of cabbage. It is the whole point of my braised cabbage, it goes into bigos, it is wrapped round gołąbki and fried into łazanki. The smell people complain about is not really the smell of cabbage. It is the smell of cabbage that has been cooked for too long, and that part you can control.
The short answer
Cabbage smells when it is cooked for a long time because its sulfur compounds keep changing in the heat, until they form the ones behind that heavy, lingering smell. Cook it for a shorter time, cook it in plenty of water, cut out the core, or use fermented cabbage, and most of the smell goes.
Where the smell comes from
Cabbage and the whole family it belongs to carry a store of sulfur compounds that the plant uses to defend itself. On their own they are fairly quiet. It is when the leaves are cut, chewed or heated that they react and release the sharp, mustardy flavour the family is known for.
Heat keeps that reaction going. The enzymes behind it work fastest at around 60°C and stop somewhere short of boiling. If the cooking carries on for a long time after that, the heat slowly turns those compounds into others that build up in the pan and give off the strong, lingering smell of overcooked cabbage.
Onions go the other way. Cook an onion for a long time and it turns sweet and mellow. Cook cabbage for a long time and it gets stronger and less pleasant, which is why the two behave so differently in a long braise.
Not every cabbage is the same
Some members of the family carry far more of these compounds than others. Relative to each other, the amounts run roughly like this:
| Vegetable | Relative amount |
|---|---|
| Brussels sprouts | 35 |
| Green cabbage | 26 |
| White cabbage | 15 |
| Red cabbage | 10 |
| Chinese cabbage | 3 |
| Cauliflower | 2 |
So Brussels sprouts are the strongest of the lot, and Chinese cabbage and cauliflower barely register. White cabbage, the one in most Polish cooking, sits in the middle.
Where and when it grew matters too. Summer heat and drought push the levels up, while the cold, wet and darker days of autumn and winter bring them down, so a winter cabbage tends to be milder than a summer one.
Cut out the core
Within one head, the most active part is the young, growing tissue in the middle. The core of a cabbage is about twice as active as its outer leaves. If a cabbage dish is going to cook for a while, cutting the core out is one of the easiest ways to take the edge off it.
How you cook it changes the smell
Cooking it quickly in plenty of boiling water gives the mildest result. A big pot of boiling water brings it up to temperature fast, which stops the enzymes early, and it draws flavour out of the leaves into the water. Steaming or stir frying keeps more of it in, so the flavour comes out stronger.
What makes it worse is time. My braised cabbage simmers for about fifteen minutes and then only a couple more. It is cooked through by then, and every extra half an hour would make it heavier and more sulfurous rather than better.
Why sauerkraut does not smell like boiled cabbage
Fermenting cabbage turns almost all of those sulfur compounds into milder, less bitter ones. That is why sauerkraut can simmer in a pot for hours without giving off the smell the same time would draw out of fresh cabbage alone. The long cook that spoils fresh cabbage suits sauerkraut, because the ferment has already done the changing.
For raw cabbage and coleslaw
Raw cabbage works differently. Chopping it releases more of these compounds, and dressing chopped cabbage with something acidic can make some of the sharp ones as much as six times stronger. If you want a milder slaw, soak the shredded cabbage in cold water for a while first. The water draws out much of what the chopping released, and the leaves come out crisper too.
The quick list
- Cook it for less time. Most of the smell comes from the long cook, not the cabbage.
- If you are boiling it, use plenty of water.
- Cut out the core before it goes in.
- Autumn and winter cabbages are milder than summer ones.
- For anything that cooks for hours, use sauerkraut.
- For slaw, soak the shredded cabbage in cold water first.
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