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Stuffed Cabbage

A cabbage leaf is stuffed with chicken or veal forcemeat balls, tied, wrapped in cheese cloth, and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,936 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Stuffed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut out the heart of the cabbage.

  2. Fill the cavity with forcemeat balls.

  3. Tie the cabbage firmly together and wrap it in cheese cloth.

Cook

  1. Boil in a covered kettle for 2 hours.

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. Chicken + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,936 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + chickentop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together436 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 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

Fresh cabbage
Forms the outer wrapper that holds the forcemeat together and turns tender during boiling.
Forcemeat balls of chicken or veal
Provide the savoury filling that cooks through inside the cabbage as it simmers.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cheese):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cheese. 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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