Name: Cabbage and Apples
Ingredients: 1 quart cabbage, shredded; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 sour apples, peeled, cored, and sliced; Salt and pepper to taste; 2 tablespoons butter; 4 tablespoons brown sugar; 2 tablespoons vinegar

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 ↓

Cabbage and Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Shred the cabbage and measure 1 quart.

Cook

In a saucepan, heat the butter until hot.
Add the shredded cabbage and sliced apples to the saucepan.
Pour in boiling water to cover the mixture and cook until tender.
Sprinkle with flour, salt, pepper, brown sugar, and vinegar.
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.

Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + appletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together235 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Cabbage: Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes tender as it cooks.
Apples: Add tartness and sweetness that balance the cabbage.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the saucepan.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the flavors caramelize slightly.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the apples and sugar.
Flour: Thickens the cooking liquid as it is sprinkled into the mixture.

Swap the apple

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

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Mangofits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, flour, pepper, butter, sugar, 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.