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Cabbage Served with Broth, Garbure

A baked casserole of cabbage, cheese, bread, and beef broth.

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 ↓

Cabbage Served with Broth, Garbure

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim and wash the cabbage, cut in half, and remove the stalks.

  2. Parboil the cabbage in lightly salted water until three-quarters cooked, then drain.

  3. Separate the leaves and place a layer in a baking dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Add a layer of cheese, then a layer of bread, seasoning each layer with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  3. Moisten with beef broth to cover and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for one hour.

  4. Serve with a soup tureen of beef broth.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Swiss cheese + beeftop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 casserole and becomes tender and sweet as it cooks.
Gruyere or swiss cheese
Melts between the layers to bind them and add savory, nutty richness.
Bread
Soaks up the broth and cheese, helping the layers hold together as a soft pudding-like dish.
Beef broth
Provides moisture for baking and adds savory, meaty flavor throughout.

The step that matters

Parboil the cabbage until three-quarters cooked. Cabbage that is fully cooked before baking turns mushy and watery, while underdone leaves stay tough. Stopping at three-quarters cooked lets the leaves finish softening in the oven without losing their shape or releasing excess liquid.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (swiss cheese, bread, pepper, nutmeg, beef):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against swiss cheese, bread, pepper, nutmeg, beef. 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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