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With Cabbage

A pork sausage-stuffed cabbage rolled and boiled, topped with a browned butter and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage 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 ↓

With Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pass the fat and lean pork through a sausage mill.

  2. Mix in the chopped onion, pepper, salt, and mace.

Cook the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage in half and scoop out the heart from both halves.

  2. Fill the cabbage halves with the sausage mixture and tie securely with twine.

  3. Place the cabbage in salted water to cover and boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Drain the cabbage, saving up to 1 cup of the liquid.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pan, brown the butter over high heat, stir in the browned flour, and add the saved liquid.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cabbage and 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. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the sausage filling moist and juicy as it cooks.
Lean pork
Provides the meaty structure and body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and helps it brown.
Browned flour
Thickens the saved cooking liquid into a smooth, flavorful sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Browning the butter over high heat develops nutty, toasted flavors, but it can scorch quickly. Stirring the flour in keeps it from clumping, so the liquid thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, pepper, cabbage, butter, 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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