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Cabbage with Fried Apples

A dish of finely chopped boiled cabbage sautéed with butter, salt, and pepper, topped with fried apple rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cabbage with Fried Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Chop the boiled cabbage very finely.

  2. Sauté the cabbage in butter, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Fry the apples

  1. Peel, core, and slice the sour apples into rings.

  2. Dust the apple rings with flour and fry them in hot lard until golden.

Plate and serve

  1. Heap the sautéed cabbage in small pyramids on a hot platter.

  2. Top each pyramid with a slice of fried apple.

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 + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, once sautéed in butter, becomes soft and mellow.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the sautéed cabbage a smooth texture.
Sour apples
Provide acidity that balances the sweetness of the fried apple and the richness of the fat.
Flour
Light dusting that helps the apple rings brown evenly and develop a golden crust when fried.
Lard
Hot frying fat that browns the floured apple rings and adds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the floured apple rings in hot lard until golden. Lard must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly. If it is too cool, the apples absorb fat and turn greasy and soggy instead of forming a crisp golden crust.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, butter, pepper, flour. 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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