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Turnip-cabbage, German Style

A German-style dish of turnip-cabbage simmered with onions, butter, broth, and veal gravy, finished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turnip-cabbage, German Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the Turnip-Cabbages.

  2. Parboil them for 5 minutes, then drain.

Make the dish

  1. Finely slice the onions and sauté them in a saucepan with butter until lightly fried.

  2. Add the Cabbages to the onions, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and moisten with broth.

  3. Cover and cook until tender, allowing the broth to reduce.

  4. Stir in the butter or Allemande sauce and veal gravy, then simmer for 15 minutes.

  5. Before serving, add finely-chopped parsley.

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. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turnip-cabbages
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender vegetable base.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth when lightly fried in butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving a smooth finish.
Broth
Provides moisture for gentle cooking, reducing to concentrate flavor.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until tender, allowing the broth to reduce. Cooking covered softens the cabbage evenly, while letting the broth reduce concentrates its flavor. If the pan dries out or cooks too hard, the vegetables can scorch or turn uneven before they are tender.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, cabbage, onion, butter, pepper, veal, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, cabbage, onion, butter, pepper, veal, parsley. 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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