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Braized Cabbage, French Style

Braised cabbage cooked with pork fat, carrots, onions, spices, and finished with Allemande sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braized Cabbage, French Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim the cabbage.

  2. Wash the cabbage.

  3. Cut the cabbage into quarters.

  4. Parboil the cabbage for 15 minutes.

  5. Immerse the cabbage in cold water.

  6. Drain the cabbage on a napkin.

  7. Cut out the stalks of the cabbage.

  8. Season the cabbage with salt and pepper.

  9. Roll each quarter of cabbage.

  10. Cover each quarter with a slice of fat pork tied with string.

Braise

  1. Line the bottom of a deep saucepan with thin slices of fat pork.

  2. Finely slice the carrot and onion.

  3. Place the sliced carrot and onion on the pork with pepper, cloves, bay leaf, parsley, and thyme.

  4. Place the cabbage on top of the pork and vegetables.

  5. Moisten the cabbage with enough broth to cover.

  6. Cover the pan and bring to a boil.

  7. Reduce heat to simmer slowly.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, remove the cabbage.

  2. Discard the string and pork.

  3. Keep the cabbage warm.

  4. Strain the gravy to remove grease.

  5. Add 3 tablespoons of Allemande sauce to thicken.

  6. Serve the cabbage with the sauce poured over it.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 and becomes tender through slow braising.
Fat pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the cabbage and the braising liquid.
Broth
Provides the cooking liquid that gently softens the cabbage and forms the gravy.
Allemande sauce
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the cabbage when served.

The step that matters

Reduce heat to a slow simmer. Boiling vigorously toughens the outer leaves and breaks up the cabbage, while slow simmering lets the connective tissue soften gently and keeps the quarters intact.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, pork, carrot, onion, clove, parsley, thyme):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, pork, carrot, onion, clove, parsley, thyme. 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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