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Turkish Cabbage Rolls

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Turkish Cabbage Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mince the cold cooked lamb and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Moisten the mixture with a little strained tomato juice thickened slightly with flour.

  3. Take small, tender cabbage leaves and roll the minced lamb into individual rolls.

  4. Fasten the rolls with string or small toothpicks.

  5. Place the rolls in a saucepan of boiling salted water and cook gently until the cabbage leaves are tender.

  6. Make a sauce using thickened strained tomato juice.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together979 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tomato + cabbagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 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

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, tomato, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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