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Cabbage with Pigs' Tongues

A cabbage dish cooked with pigs' tongues, butter, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cabbage with Pigs' Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage crossways into quarters and remove a few outer leaves.

  2. Wash the cabbage thoroughly.

  3. Place it in a pot with 3 quarts of boiling water and boil the cabbage for 10 minutes.

  4. Drain and press out excess water.

  5. Remove the stalks and chop the cabbage into pieces weighing about 2 pounds.

  6. Season the chopped cabbage with salt and pepper.

Layer and bake

  1. Boil the pigs' tongues with the cabbage.

  2. Cut the pigs' tongues lengthwise.

  3. Layer 1 inch of cabbage at the bottom of a pan and place the meat in the center.

  4. Cover with more cabbage.

  5. Add butter, vinegar, and water to the pan.

  6. Bake in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

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

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

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

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

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 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

Savoy cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and, once cooked, becomes soft and tender.
Pigs' tongues
Provide the rich, fatty meat that is cooked slowly alongside the cabbage.
Butter or dripping
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the cabbage moist as it bakes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and cabbage.

The step that matters

Layering and baking the cabbage with the meat. Covering the meat with cabbage and adding butter, vinegar and water before baking keeps the mixture moist, so the tongues and cabbage cook gently rather than drying out in the oven.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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