Skip to main content
Main

Stuffed Cabbage for Garnishing

A cabbage head stuffed with sausage, herbs, livers, bread crumbs, chestnuts, and salt pork, baked and served with brown sauce and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,417 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Stuffed Cabbage for Garnishing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and parboil it for 20 minutes.

  2. Refresh the cabbage under running water and drain it on a towel.

  3. Make an incision around the stalk with a long thin knife and remove the inner leaves to create space for stuffing.

Stuff and braise

  1. In a bowl, combine sausage meat, cooked herbs, chicken livers, bread crumbs, and chestnuts; season to taste.

  2. Fill the cabbage with the stuffing and cover it with a slice of salt pork.

  3. Line a saucepan with vegetables and place the stuffed cabbage inside the saucepan.

  4. Moisten with broth.

  5. Cook for at least 1 hour in a mild oven.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown sauce blended with rich gravy.

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. Chicken + porktop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Cabbage + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Sausage meat
Forms the bulk of the stuffing and gives it a rich, savory body.
Chicken livers
Add moisture and a deeper, more savory flavor to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and help the stuffing hold together and stay moist.
Chestnuts
Add soft texture and a mild, nutty sweetness to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Make the incision and remove inner leaves. Removing enough inner leaves creates room for the stuffing; cutting too little leaves the cabbage cramped and uneven, while cutting too deep can tear the head apart and let filling escape during the long cook.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, bread, chestnut, pork, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, bread, chestnut, pork, sauce. 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.

More stuffed cabbage recipes

Turkish 4 See all 77 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes