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Cabbage Sprouts

A boiled cabbage sprout dish flavored with salt pork, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 397 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cabbage Sprouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and trim the cabbage sprouts.

Cook

  1. Boil in hot, salted water with the streaked salt pork until tender.

  2. Drain the sprouts and chop them finely.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the melted butter and lemon juice.

  2. Serve very 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 + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Cabbage + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together919 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pork + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,786 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage sprouts
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled and chopped.
Streaked salt pork
Adds savory, salty flavor to the cooking water as it simmers with the sprouts.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the chopped sprouts.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. Sprouts must cook long enough to soften fully, but overcooking leaves them mushy and dull in color. Testing for tenderness during boiling helps keep them pleasantly firm and green.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, butter, lemon):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, lemon. 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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