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Bound the Table

A cooked cabbage dish seasoned with butter, stock, pepper, salt, vinegar, and optional bacon, served alone or as a side.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chevalley de Rivaz, Victor · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Bound the Table

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut a cabbage, remove the stalk and ribs of the larger leaves, and cut each piece crosswise into strips about a quarter of an inch wide.

  2. Parboil the strips, then put them into a saucepan with a good piece of butter. Add a small quantity of stock or broth, pepper, salt, and some powdered spices according to taste.

Cook and finish

  1. Let the minced cabbage simmer until quite tender, adding a tablespoonful of vinegar or more at the time of serving.

  2. Strain the liquor from the cabbage, thicken it with a little flour, skim off any superfluous fat, and pour it over the cabbage.

Variations

  1. For red cabbage: do not soak it in vinegar and water, but in water alone and salt. Take an equal quantity of apples and onions, both minced fine (about a handful each for one cabbage). Put them and the parboiled cabbage into a saucepan with a piece of butter, pepper, and sufficient salt, and some parsley and sweet herbs tied up in a bundle. Let the whole simmer very gently for some hours, the longer the better. Remove the bundle and add a gill of claret in which you have dissolved a tablespoonful of sugar. Add a small pat of butter, and the dish is ready for table.

  2. For very young cabbages: proceed as if dressing a V Anc/laise. When it is half-done, drain it and squeeze it dry if desired. Melt a piece of butter in a saucepan, add some flour, salt, pepper, grated nutmeg or powdered mace, and enough cream to make a thick sauce. Place the cabbage pieces or quarters in this sauce to finish cooking, and serve with the sauce over.

  3. Take some savoy cabbage, cut it up small, and parboil it as in recipe No. 2. Take an equal quantity of parboiled rice, put the two together into a saucepan full of plain broth or stock, and simmer until both rice and cabbage are thoroughly done. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese. Optionally add a piece of bacon, an onion, and some parsley to make an economical broth.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

270Calories
7 gProtein
16 gFat
26 gCarbs

Counts 8 of 9 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Broccoli1 cup chopped (156g)55
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Bacon1 slice cooked (8g)43
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Chevalley de Rivaz, Victor. 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. See the original page.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cabbage + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together187 recipes

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

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 mild during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the cabbage a silky finish.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the cooking liquor into a smooth sauce that coats the cabbage.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cooked cabbage.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the claret and vinegar with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer the red cabbage very gently for hours. Long, gentle heat is needed to soften the tough cabbage fibres and blend the apples, onions and herbs into the liquor. Boiling hard can toughen the cabbage and break it down unevenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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