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Cabbage Curried

Cabbage simmered with curry powder, coconut milk, tomato conserve, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cabbage Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the cabbage and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Slice the onion into rings and chop the garlic.

Cook

  1. Fry the onion, garlic, bay leaves, and cloves in butter until colored.

  2. Add curry powder, coconut milk, tomato conserve, water or stock, and salt.

  3. Stir in the cabbage and let it stew gently until tender.

  4. Before serving, add a squeeze of lemon juice.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Cabbage + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together635 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Green cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into tender pieces as it stews.
Butter
Fat that carries the frying flavours and helps the onion and garlic brown.
Coconut milk
Adds richness and body to the sauce while mellowing the curry spices.
Tomato conserve
Adds sweetness and acidity that balance the curry and thicken the liquid.
Curry powder
Provides the main spiced aroma and flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Stewing the cabbage gently until tender. Cooking slowly over low heat lets the cabbage soften evenly and absorb the sauce without scorching the liquid, which can happen if it boils hard or sticks to the base of the pan.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, garlic, butter, coconut, milk, tomato):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, garlic, butter, coconut, milk, tomato. 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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