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Sausages with Red Cabbage

Sausages served atop stewed red cabbage with butter, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sausages with Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the red cabbage into large pieces.

Cook

  1. In a clean stew-pan, combine the cabbage, butter, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

  2. Cover and stew on low heat until tender but not too soft.

  3. Meanwhile, fry the sausages in a skillet until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve the cabbage on a plate and arrange the sausages on top.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Sausages
Browning in the skillet gives them savory flavor and a golden crust.
Red cabbage
Becomes tender through slow stewing, forming the bulk of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cabbage soften gently in the pan.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the cabbage and helps it keep its color.

The step that matters

Stew the cabbage on low heat. Low, covered heat softens the cabbage gradually. Too much heat or too long cooking can make it mushy and dull, so check it while it stews.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagethe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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