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Fried Cabbage

A sautéed cabbage dish flavored with lard, sweet cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage very fine using a slaw cutter.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, stir well, and let it stand for five minutes.

Cook and finish

  1. Heat an iron kettle until smoking hot, then add the lard.

  2. Add the cabbage and stir briskly until tender.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the sweet cream.

  4. Add the vinegar after the cream is well mixed and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 sweet as it cooks.
Lard
Fat for frying that carries heat evenly and keeps the cabbage from sticking.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a mild dairy body that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Adding the cream off the heat. Cream can curdle or separate if it is exposed to strong direct heat, so it is stirred in after removing the kettle from the heat. Adding the vinegar only after the cream is fully mixed prevents the acid from curdling it.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cream, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, vinegar. 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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