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Filled Cabbage

A dish of cabbage leaves filled with a mixture of ground meat, rice, bread, and eggs, simmered in tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Filled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Grind the round steak and veal together.

  2. Mix in the soaked bread, rice, eggs, pepper, and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Scald 12 large cabbage leaves and fill each with the meat mixture, then roll them up.

  2. Strain the can of tomatoes and add a little water.

  3. Place the filled cabbage leaves in the tomato mixture and boil for 2 hours.

  4. Thicken the sauce with browned flour before serving.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the meat filling so it holds its shape when rolled and cooked.
Bread
Soaked bread adds moisture and keeps the filling tender.
Raw rice
Absorbs juices during the long simmer and adds body to the filling.
Round steak
Provides the main meat body and savory flavor of the filling.
Tomatoes
Form the acidic, flavorful base of the simmering sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the tomato sauce so it clings to the cabbage rolls.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle over the 2 hours. The rolls must cook through slowly. A hard boil can break the cabbage leaves apart and toughen the meat, while rice needs steady moisture to become tender.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, veal, bread, egg, pepper, flour):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, veal, bread, egg, 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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