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Chopped Cabbage

A boiled cabbage dish seasoned with salt, pepper, and vinegar, served hot.

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 ↓

Chopped Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Remove the stalks and green leaves from the cabbage and quarter it.

  2. Boil the cabbage in salted water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the water.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover the cabbage with pot liquor from the ham kettle, skimming off the fat.

  2. Cook until tender.

  3. Drain again.

  4. Press hard.

  5. Chop the cabbage.

  6. Season with pepper, salt, and a little vinegar.

  7. 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. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the mild, rich flavour of the cooked cabbage.

The step that matters

Press hard. Cooked cabbage holds a lot of water. Pressing out the excess before chopping and seasoning keeps the dish from tasting diluted and stops the seasoning from washing away.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Cabbagethe original
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar. 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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