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Stewed Bed Cabbage

A stew of sliced red cabbage, ham, butter, stock, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Bed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut the cabbage into very thin slices.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the cabbage, diced ham, butter, ½ pint of stock, and vinegar.

  3. Cover the pan closely and let it stew for 1 hour until very tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the remaining stock, salt, pepper, and pounded sugar; mix well.

  2. Stir over the heat until nearly all the liquid is dried away, then 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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into tender strands during slow stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the stewing liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet-savoury flavour and helps the cabbage keep its colour.
Stock or broth
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the cabbage.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour throughout the stewed cabbage.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Stewing covered for 1 hour. Cabbage must stew long enough to become fully tender; cooking too briefly leaves it tough, while the lid traps steam so the cabbage braises rather than dries out.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, vinegar, pepper, sugar. 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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