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Curled Cabbage with Rice

A dish of boiled cabbage and rice cooked with bacon, onion, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,001 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curled Cabbage with Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage into four pieces and soak in cold salted water for 30 minutes.

  2. Plunge the cabbage into boiling salted water and keep it at that temperature for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the cabbage in a sieve and rinse under cold water until cooled.

  4. Press out all moisture from the cabbage pieces.

Braise and serve

  1. In a stewpan, line the bottom with bacon slices and onion rings.

  2. Arrange the cabbage over the bacon and moisten with hot broth until just level with the tops.

  3. Cover with buttered paper and simmer gently over low heat for 2 hours.

  4. Meanwhile, boil the rice according to package instructions.

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

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

  2. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cabbage + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together361 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

Savoy cabbage
Forms the tender leaves that become the main body of the dish.
Bacon
Releases fat and savory flavor into the broth and onions as it cooks.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens over the bacon.
Hot broth
Provides moisture for gentle braising so the cabbage cooks without drying.
Patna rice
Provides a neutral starchy base that absorbs flavor from the braised dish.

The step that matters

Pressing out the moisture. Cabbage holds a lot of water after blanching. If it is not pressed dry, the extra liquid dilutes the broth and keeps the leaves from browning or concentrating in flavor during the long simmer.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, rice):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, rice. 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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