Skip to main content
Main

Colcannon

A dish of mashed potatoes and boiled cabbage mixed with butter, salt, pepper, and optional peas, beans, lentils, spices, or curry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Colcannon

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the mashed potatoes and boiled cabbage together in a bowl.

  2. Add a lump of butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

  3. For variations, substitute boiled carrots for potatoes or mix in cooked peas, beans, or lentils.

  4. Season with spices like ground cinnamon and cloves, or add curry paste or powder if desired.

  5. Heat the mixture in a saucepan with enough oil or butter to moisten it.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Potato + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and give it a soft, creamy body.
Boiled cabbage
Adds texture and a mild, sweet flavour when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavour through the mixture.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cabbage, butter, pepper, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cabbage, butter, pepper, cinnamon, clove. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes