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Cabbage, Fried

A sautéed cabbage dish seasoned with salt, pepper, herbs, and optional vegetables, served with eggs or toast.

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 ↓

Cabbage, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage roughly.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and herbs/spices.

Cook

  1. Melt the drippings in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the cabbage and turn it until browned and dry.

  3. If desired, mix in cold carrots, grated apple, or onions.

Serve

  1. Serve with hard-boiled eggs or strips of toast as garnish.

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. Carrot + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + carawaytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 browns in the fat as its moisture cooks off.
Drippings or other fat
Conducts heat evenly and carries flavor, helping the cabbage brown rather than steam.

The step that matters

Turn the cabbage until browned and dry. Cabbage releases water as it cooks. If the pan is crowded or the heat too low, the cabbage steams and turns soft and grey instead of browning. Cooking until the moisture has evaporated lets the surfaces caramelize.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, apple, onion, caraway):

  1. Carrotthe original
  2. Turnipfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, apple, onion, caraway. 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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