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Cabbage Strudel Filling

A sautéed cabbage mixture seasoned with pepper and sugar, used as a filling for a strudel.

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 ↓

Cabbage Strudel Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Grate the cabbage, sprinkle with salt, and let it stand for 30 minutes.

  2. Press out the juice and heat the lard in a pan.

Cook the filling

  1. Add the cabbage and sugar to the hot lard, frying until it turns rosy.

  2. Season with pepper to taste.

Finish and bake

  1. Instead of butter, smear the top of the strudel with sour cream before baking until crispy and red.

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. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar 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 filling and turns sweet and tender as it cooks.
Lard
Fat for frying that carries flavour and helps the cabbage brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cabbage caramelise to a rosy colour.

The step that matters

Frying the cabbage in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the cabbage steams and releases more water instead of browning. Pressing out the juice first keeps the filling from becoming soggy.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar. 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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