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Red Cabbage, Holland Aise Style

A braised red cabbage dish with apples, wine, butter, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Red Cabbage, Holland Aise Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and wash the cabbage, cut into quarters, remove stalks, and shred the leaves.

  2. Parboil the cabbage for 5 minutes, then drain.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and lightly fry the onions.

  2. Add the cabbage and sliced apples to the saucepan.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, sugar, and add the parsley.

  4. Simmer slowly for 1 hour.

  5. Add the Burgundy wine and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

  6. Remove the parsley, add a piece of butter, and toss well before serving.

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

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

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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. Cabbage + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into tender strands during slow simmering.
Apples
Add sweetness and acidity that balance the cabbage and soften as they cook.
Burgundy wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour, and helps keep the red colour bright.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the onions and finishes the dish with a glossy texture.
Onions
Add savoury aroma and flavour when lightly fried in butter at the start.

The step that matters

Simmering with the wine. Adding the wine after the long simmer lets its acidity and colour stay bright, since prolonged heating dulls red cabbage's colour and softens its flavour too far. Keep the heat gentle so the cabbage braises rather than boils and sticks.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, butter, onion, pepper, sugar, parsley, wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, butter, onion, pepper, sugar, parsley, wine. 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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