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Fried Cabbage

A quick fried cabbage dish with butter, vinegar, and chopped cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until boiling hot.

  2. Add the chopped cabbage to the hot butter.

  3. Fry until the cabbage is a light brown color.

  4. Stir in the vinegar and serve.

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. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  2. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Butter + cabbagetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries heat into the cabbage and helps it brown in the pan.
Cabbage
Main vegetable that softens and turns light brown as its surface caramelises in the hot fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery, sweet flavour of the browned cabbage.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. The butter must be very hot before the cabbage goes in, so the surface browns rather than steams. Too little heat leaves the cabbage soggy and pale, while over-browning can turn it bitter.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar. 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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