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Braized Cabbage, French Style

Braised cabbage cooked with pork fat, carrot, onion, spices, and finished with Allemande sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braized Cabbage, French Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim and wash the cabbage, cut into quarters, and parboil for 15 minutes.

  2. Immerse in cold water, drain, and remove the stalks.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then roll each quarter with a slice of fat pork, tying with string.

Braise

  1. Line a deep, flat saucepan with slices of fat pork.

  2. Add the sliced carrot and onion, a few grains of pepper and cloves, the bay leaf, and the parsley with thyme.

  3. Place the cabbage on top and moisten with enough broth to cover.

  4. Cover the pan and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer slowly.

  5. Once cooked, remove the cabbage, discard the string and pork, and keep warm in another saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy to remove grease, then add 3 tablespoons of Allemande sauce to thicken.

  2. Serve the cabbage with the sauce poured over 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the body of the dish and becomes tender during slow braising.
Fat pork
Releases fat and flavour into the cabbage and broth as it braises.
Broth
Provides the cooking liquid that gently steams and softens the cabbage.
Allemande sauce
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the cabbage.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly after bringing to a boil. A rolling boil can break up and toughen the cabbage and cloudy the broth. Gentle simmering keeps the leaves tender and the gravy clear while the fat and flavours slowly move into the liquid.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, onion, pepper, clove, parsley, thyme):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, onion, pepper, clove, parsley, thyme. 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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