Skip to main content
Main

Cabbage-leaf Dole-mah

Cabbage-Leaf Dole-Mah is a stuffed cabbage dish with beef, onion, tomato, rice, and salt simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cabbage-leaf Dole-mah

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Blanch the cabbage leaves in boiling water until wilted.

  2. In a bowl, combine the beef, onion, tomato, rice, and salt.

Roll and cook

  1. Take ½ tablespoon of the mixture and roll it tightly in a cabbage leaf, folding in the ends to seal.

  2. Place the rolled cabbage leaves in a flat-bottomed saucepan with a little water at the bottom.

  3. Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes, then add more water and cover tightly.

  4. Boil slowly over low heat for 1 hour.

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. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  4. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Beef
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the filling as it cooks.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and swells during cooking, adding bulk and body to the filling.
Cabbage leaves
Wrapper that becomes pliable when blanched and holds the filling together while cooking.
Tomato
Adds moisture and mild acidity to the filling and the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Rolling the cabbage leaves tightly. Blanching softens the leaves so they bend without cracking, and a tight, sealed roll keeps the filling from escaping and lets the rice cook evenly in the steam and liquid.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, tomato, rice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, tomato, rice. 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.

More stuffed cabbage recipes

Turkish 4 See all 77 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes