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Boiled Cabbage

A cabbage dish boiled with beef or pork and a small piece of red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Boiled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Quarter the cabbage.

  2. Boil the beef or pork.

  3. About 1 hour before dinner, place the cabbage on top of the meat.

  4. Cook until the cabbage is tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the cabbage.

  2. Pour some of the meat broth around it in a covered dish.

  3. Do not let it stand after removing from the stove.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 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 dish and softens into a tender vegetable as it cooks.
Beef or pork
Simmers to make a broth that flavors and moistens the cabbage.
Red pepper
Adds a little heat and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Serve the cabbage straight from the stove. Cabbage keeps softening in hot liquid and its sulfurous aroma grows the longer it sits. Holding it only briefly keeps its texture firm enough to hold together and its flavor fresh.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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