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Sweet and Sour Cabbage

A cabbage dish with apples, sugar, vinegar, and flour, simmered until tender.

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 ↓

Sweet and Sour Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the cabbage finely and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the apples, sliced.

Cook

  1. Heat the fat in a skillet, then add the cabbage and apples.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and cook until tender.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the cabbage and apples, then add the sugar and vinegar.

  4. Cook a little longer and serve hot with potato dumplings.

  5. If using red cabbage, pour boiling water over it 2 or 3 times to reduce the color.

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 + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it cooks.
Apples
Add tartness and fruity sweetness that balances the sugar and vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps caramelize the cabbage for a deeper flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dish its sour note.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the sauce clings to the cabbage.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be sprinkled over the cabbage and apples before the liquid is added and cooked a little longer, so it dissolves and thickens the sauce instead of forming lumps.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

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