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Stewed Red Cabbage

A slow‑cooked cabbage dish flavored with butter, vinegar, and optional lemon juice, cayenne pepper, or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Stewed Red Cabbage

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and wash it well.

  2. Slice the cabbage into the thinnest possible slices.

Stew

  1. Melt the butter in a thick saucepan and add the cabbage.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then stew slowly for 3 to 4 hours, stirring often and pressing down.

  3. Once tender, add vinegar and mix thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, optionally with broiled sausages or substitute with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cabbage + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into a tender, mellow texture as it stews.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the cabbage cook gently and carry flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the cabbage's red colour vivid.

The step that matters

Stew slowly and stir often. Long, gentle cooking breaks down the tough fibres of the cabbage. Cooking too hot can scorch the butter and sugars at the bottom of the pan, so stirring and pressing down keeps the cabbage moist and evenly cooked.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, butter, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

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