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Savoy or Curly Cabbage

A stew of Savoy cabbage, onions, potatoes, and seasonings thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Savoy or Curly Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and parboil the cabbage.

  2. Brown the chopped onion in hot fat.

Make the stew

  1. Add the cabbage to the onion, season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Cut the potatoes into dice and add them.

  3. Steam the mixture, then thicken with a mixture of flour and water 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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 stew and becomes tender and sweet as it steams.
Onion
Browning in hot fat builds savory, sweet flavor that underpins the stew.
Potatoes
Diced potatoes soften as they steam and add body to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and water. Stirring a flour and water mixture into hot liquid can form lumps if added undiluted. Mixing it smooth first and adding it gradually helps the starch disperse evenly and thicken the stew without clumping.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, potato, 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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