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To Stew Bed Cabbage

A cabbage stew cooked slowly with butter, pepper, salt, vinegar, and optional lemon juice, cayenne pepper, or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Stew Bed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip the outer leaves from the cabbage and wash it well.

  2. Cut the cabbage into the thinnest possible slices, starting at the top.

Stew

  1. Melt the butter in a thick saucepan and add the cabbage.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then stew slowly for 3 to 4 hours, stirring often and pressing down.

  3. When tender, add vinegar and mix thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve the cabbage in a hot dish, optionally with broiled sausages or substitute with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and gravy.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together397 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish and softens into tender strands as it stews.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the cabbage cooks in the pan.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the long-cooked cabbage.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly over a long time. Low, slow cooking for hours is what makes the cabbage tender. Stirring often and pressing it down helps it cook evenly and keeps it from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, butter, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, butter, pepper, vinegar. 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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