Skip to main content
Main

Bubble and Squeak

A fried dish of sliced cold meat and cabbage with onion, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Bubble and Squeak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat 1 ounce of drippings in a frying pan.

  2. Peel and chop the onion and any cold vegetables on hand.

  3. Slice the cold meat thickly.

Cook the meat and vegetables

  1. Fry the sliced meat in the drippings.

  2. Keep the fried meat warm on a hot dish.

  3. Fry the onion in the same pan until pale yellow.

  4. Add the cold vegetables to the onion.

  5. Fry the vegetables until slightly brown.

  6. Season the vegetables with salt and pepper.

  7. Arrange the vegetables around the meat on the hot dish.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Provides the main body of the dish, browned in drippings for savory flavor.
Remains of cold cabbage
Forms the bulk of the vegetable mixture, softening and browning in the pan.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens and turns pale yellow in the fat.
Drippings
Supplies fat for frying, adding richness and helping the meat and vegetables brown.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables until slightly brown. Browning relies on surface heat and enough fat; if the vegetables are crowded or steamed, they stay pale and soft instead of developing toasty, savory flavor through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, cabbage, 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.

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes