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Bacon and Greens

A dish of boiled cabbage with bacon, bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bacon and Greens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage into quarters and wash it thoroughly.

  2. Press out excess water and boil the cabbage with the red pepper for 1–2 hours.

Assemble and fry

  1. Place the boiled cabbage on a dish and top it with the cooked bacon.

  2. To fry the cabbage the next day, heat it in a pan until crispy.

  3. Dip the slices of bacon in bread crumbs and place them in a frying pan with chopped parsley and pepper.

  4. Just before serving, add 1 cup of cream to the pan and mix well.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 when boiled, then crisps when fried.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor, and browns in the pan as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Coat the bacon slices, helping them brown and crisp in the frying pan.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, mellowing the flavor of the pan mixture.

The step that matters

Frying the cabbage until crispy. Boiled cabbage is soft and wet, so it must be heated in a pan with enough heat to drive off moisture. Otherwise it stays limp rather than browning and crisping.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, bread, parsley, cream):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, bread, parsley, cream. 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 bacon and cabbage recipes

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