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Fried Cabbage

Fried cabbage is a sautéed cabbage dish cooked with bacon grease, water, baking soda, sugar, red pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fried Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a skillet, heat the bacon grease over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped cabbage and stir occasionally until browned.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the boiling water, baking soda, sugar, and salt.

  4. Pour the mixture over the cabbage and add the red pepper.

  5. Continue to cook until the cabbage is tender.

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 + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens as it cooks, becoming tender.
Bacon grease
Fat that carries the heat to the cabbage and helps it brown.
Baking soda
Raises the pan's alkalinity, which helps the cabbage soften and turn tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness and sulfur notes of cooked cabbage.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda and sugar mixture. Baking soda makes the cooking liquid alkaline, which speeds softening but can also turn cabbage mushy or discolored if too much is used. Measure it carefully and watch the texture as the cabbage cooks.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper. 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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