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Cabbage with Bacon

A cabbage dish cooked with bacon, herbs, and a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Cabbage with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the cabbage thoroughly and cut it into quarters.

  2. Steam the quarters or boil them in water for 15 minutes, then drain.

  3. Mince the bacon, shallot, parsley, marjoram, thyme, sugar, salt, and pepper.

Cook

  1. In a stew-pan, cook the minced mixture until the bacon melts.

  2. Add the cabbage quarters to the pan and pour enough gravy to half cover them.

  3. Simmer gently until the cabbage is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the cabbage and place it in a hot dish, covering it to keep warm.

  2. Strain the gravy, thicken it with flour and butter, and pour it over the cabbage.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow simmering.
Bacon
Melts into the pan, adding fat and savory flavor to the cooking liquid.
Gravy
Provides the cooking liquid and moisture that softens the cabbage and carries flavor.
Flour
Thickens the strained gravy when cooked with butter, giving it body for coating the cabbage.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a roux that thickens the gravy and adds richness.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the cabbage is tender. Gentle heat softens cabbage's fibers evenly without breaking the leaves or boiling the liquid too hard, which would toughen the bacon and reduce the gravy unevenly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, parsley, marjoram, thyme, sugar, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, parsley, marjoram, thyme, sugar, 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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