Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Cabbage, Spanish Style

A Spanish-style stew of shredded cabbage cooked with butter, broth, Madeira wine, and aromatics, garnished with chestnuts and fried sausages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stewed Cabbage, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim, wash and quarter the cabbage, then remove the stalks.

  2. Cut the leaves into fine shreds.

  3. Parboil the cabbage for 5 minutes, immerse it in cold water, drain it and press it dry.

Make the gravy

  1. Lightly fry the carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves and garlic in clarified butter.

  2. Add the broth and Madeira wine.

  3. Cook until reduced by three-quarters.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Remove grease from the gravy.

Stew and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the cabbage to the saucepan and cover the saucepan.

  3. Simmer the cabbage to reduce moisture.

  4. Add the gravy to the cabbage after its moisture has reduced.

  5. Simmer until the cabbage is tender and nicely glazed.

  6. Drain off the butter.

  7. Dish up the cabbage.

  8. Garnish with glazed chestnuts and fried sausages.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 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 bulk of the dish and becomes tender and glazed as it stews slowly.
Broth
Provides the liquid base that reduces into a savoury gravy coating the cabbage.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and a slightly sweet, aromatic note to the reduced gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the frying and stewing stages.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savoury aromatic base for the gravy as it fries gently.

The step that matters

Reduce the cabbage's moisture before adding the gravy. Cabbage releases a lot of water when covered and simmered. If the gravy goes in before that moisture has cooked off, the dish turns watery and the gravy cannot cling and glaze the leaves.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, clove, garlic. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesChestnut SoupChestnut Soup52 recipes