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Braized Cabbage, French Style

Braised cabbage with pork fat, carrot, onion, spices, and Allemande sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 and wash the cabbage, cut into quarters, and parboil for 15 minutes.

  2. Immerse in cold water, drain, and remove the stalks.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then roll each quarter with a slice of fat pork, tying with string.

Braise

  1. Line a deep, flat saucepan with thin slices of fat pork.

  2. Add sliced carrot and onion, a few grains of pepper and cloves, bay leaf, and parsley with thyme.

  3. Place the cabbage on top and moisten with enough broth to cover.

  4. Cover the pan and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer slowly.

  5. Once cooked, remove the cabbage, discard the string and pork, and keep warm.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy to remove grease, then add Allemande sauce to thicken.

  2. 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
Its leaves soften and turn tender during the long, slow braise.
Fat pork
Melting fat bastes the cabbage and adds richness to the braising liquid.
Broth
Provides the moist cooking liquid that gently braises the cabbage and forms the gravy.
Allemande sauce
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the cabbage when served.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after bringing to a boil. A gentle simmer lets the cabbage become tender without breaking apart or drying out. A hard boil can toughen the outer layers and cloud the gravy.

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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