Cabbage

The smell of cooking cabbage is not the smell of cabbage. It is the smell of boiling water releasing sulphur compounds from the vegetable's cell walls. Cabbage stores glucosinolates that react with water under heat to produce hydrogen sulphide and dimethyl sulphide — the gases that fill your kitchen and linger for hours. The longer it boils, the more sulphur is released, and the more the cabbage loses its structure, colour, and flavour to the water. High-heat methods — charring, blistering, stir-frying — work differently. The heat is intense enough to brown the outside before the interior has time to release its sulphur. The Maillard reaction creates savoury, nutty flavour compounds, and the cooking is over in minutes rather than the twenty-plus it takes to make cabbage smell like a school kitchen. The smell is not the vegetable. It is the method.