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Bubble and Squeak

A dish of fried cabbage and beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Bubble and Squeak

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Chop the boiled cabbage finely.

  2. Season the cabbage with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the cabbage in butter until heated through.

  2. Broil the slices of cold boiled beef until slightly crispy.

  3. Place the fried cabbage in a dish and arrange the beef slices around it.

  4. Serve very hot.

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. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  4. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled white cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and soaks up butter and seasoning as it fries.
Butter
Fat that fries the cabbage, adding richness and browning the surface.
Cold boiled salted beef
Adds savoury, salty meat flavour and gains crispness when broiled.

The step that matters

Frying the cabbage in butter until heated through. Cabbage is already cooked, so the goal is to heat it evenly and drive off surface moisture. Frying in a hot pan with enough fat helps it brown lightly rather than steam and turn soggy.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, beef. 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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