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Stewed Cabbage, Spanish Style

A Spanish-style stew of shredded cabbage cooked with butter, broth, Madeira wine, and aromatics, garnished with chestnuts and fried sausages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Cabbage, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim and wash the cabbage, quarter them, remove the stalks, and cut the leaves into fine shreds.

  2. Parboil the cabbage for 5 minutes, then immerse in cold water, drain, and press dry.

Make the braise

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the cabbage, cover, and simmer to reduce moisture.

  2. In a separate saucepan, lightly fry the carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, and garlic in clarified butter.

  3. Add the broth and Madeira wine, cooking until reduced by three-quarters.

  4. Strain the gravy, remove grease, and add it to the cabbage after its moisture has reduced.

  5. Simmer until the cabbage is tender and nicely glazed.

Serve

  1. Before serving, drain off the butter, dish up the cabbage, and garnish with glazed chestnuts and fried sausages.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 turns tender and silky as it slowly simmers.
Broth
Provides the liquid base that cooks the cabbage and reduces into a flavourful gravy.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour as it reduces into the gravy.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness while the cabbage cooks.
Onion
Builds a savoury aromatic base for the gravy as it fries gently.

The step that matters

Reducing the cabbage's moisture before adding the gravy. Cabbage releases a lot of water as it cooks. If the moisture is not driven off first, the gravy dilutes and the cabbage stews rather than glazes, so the dish turns watery.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, clove, garlic):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, clove, garlic. 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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