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Cabbage with Quails or Partridges

A braised cabbage dish cooked with quails or partridges, carrots, onions, bacon, and smoked sausages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cabbage with Quails or Partridges

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and wash the cabbage, quarter them, and cut out the stalks.

  2. Parboil the cabbage in lightly salted water until three-quarters cooked, then drain and press out the water.

  3. Cut the cabbage coarsely and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Dress the quails or partridges as for roasting, then parboil them for 2 minutes and wash in cold water.

Layer and cook

  1. Line a saucepan with thin slices of fat pork, then add a layer of cabbage at the bottom and around the sides.

  2. Arrange the quails, carrots, and onions (with cloves stuck in) on the cabbage layer.

  3. Cover with another layer of cabbage, then add the remaining quails, parboiled bacon, and smoked sausages.

  4. Top with the rest of the cabbage and a thin layer of sliced pork, then moisten with stock broth drippings.

  5. Cover with buttered paper and the saucepan lid, then bring to a boil.

  6. Reduce heat and cook slowly for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the buttered paper and pork, then drain the cabbage in a colander, keeping the quails, sausages, bacon, and carrots separate.

  2. Serve the cabbage with the quails, exposing only their breasts, and garnish with sliced bacon, carrots, and halved 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, slowly cooked, becomes tender and sweet.
Quails or partridges
Provide the main meat, which gains savoury flavour from slow cooking in the cabbage.
Parboiled bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that seasons the cabbage as it cooks.
Smoked sausages
Add smoky, savoury richness that flavours the surrounding cabbage.
Fat pork
Lines the pan and adds fat that keeps the cabbage moist and prevents sticking.

The step that matters

Reduce heat and cook slowly. Once the pan reaches a boil, a gentle low heat keeps the liquid simmering rather than churning, so the cabbage and meat cook evenly and stay tender instead of drying or breaking apart.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, quail, carrot, onion, clove, pork. 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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