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Fried Cabbage

A quick sauté of thinly sliced white cabbage in meat drippings, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Fried Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cabbage very thin.

Cook

  1. Heat the meat drippings in a frying pan.

  2. Add the cabbage to the pan.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Fry the cabbage quickly, stirring often to prevent scorching.

  5. Cover the pan when not stirring.

  6. Cook until the cabbage is tender, then serve hot.

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. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + meattop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens as it cooks, becoming tender and sweet.
Meat drippings
Provides fat for frying, carrying flavor and helping the cabbage brown lightly.

The step that matters

Fry quickly and stir often. Thinly sliced cabbage has a large surface area and scorches easily over direct heat. Frequent stirring spreads the heat and keeps pieces from burning before the cabbage becomes tender.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper. 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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