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Cabbage Stuffed

A cabbage is stuffed with minced meat, onion, and seasonings, then boiled and served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut out the stalk from the cabbage.

  2. Mince the cold meat and onion, then season with pepper, salt, and parsley.

  3. Stuff the cabbage with the meat mixture and tie it in a flour cloth.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Boil the stuffed cabbage for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on size.

  2. In a saucepan, bring stock to a boil.

  3. In a bowl, mix baked brown flour with a little cold milk and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling stock until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve the cabbage with the thick 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the outer wrapper that holds the stuffing together while it cooks.
Cold meat
Supplies the savory filling that flavors the cabbage as it simmers.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and moisture to the minced filling.
Baked brown flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy when stirred into boiling liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the boiling stock. Flour must be smoothed into cold milk first and then stirred into boiling stock so it disperses evenly. Starch granules otherwise clump and form lumps instead of a smooth, thickened gravy.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, pepper, parsley, flour, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, pepper, parsley, flour, milk. 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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