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Stewed Cabbage, Spanish Style

Spanish-style stewed cabbage cooked with butter, carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, garlic, broth, and Madeira wine, garnished with chestnuts and fried sausages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Stewed Cabbage, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim the cabbage, wash it, and quarter it.

  2. Remove the stalks and cut the leaves into fine shreds.

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

Braise the cabbage

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan and add the cabbage.

  2. Cover the saucepan and simmer to reduce moisture.

Make the gravy

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

  2. Add broth and Madeira wine and cook until reduced by three-quarters.

  3. Strain the gravy and remove the grease from it.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the gravy to the cabbage after its moisture is reduced and simmer until the cabbage is tender and nicely glazed.

  2. Drain off excess butter, dish up the cabbage, and 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 silky as it simmers slowly.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the shredded cabbage cook gently and glaze without sticking.
Broth
Provides liquid and savoury depth that reduces into the gravy coating the cabbage.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aroma as it reduces, deepening the flavour of the gravy.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness as it softens and browns gently in the gravy base.

The step that matters

Reduce the cabbage's moisture before adding the gravy. Cabbage releases a lot of water while simmering. If the gravy goes in too early, the cabbage stays watery and the sauce thins instead of glazing 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.

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