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Bubble and Squeak

A fried dish of mashed potatoes, cabbage, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Bubble and Squeak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage.

  2. Mash the potatoes.

  3. Cut the bacon into small dice.

Cook

  1. Mix the cabbage, potatoes, and bacon together.

  2. Fry the mixture in a hot frying pan until browned on both sides, shaping it into a flat cake the size of the pan.

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. Potato + cabbagetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that mashes and binds the mixture into a cohesive cake.
Cabbage
Provides bulk and a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour when cooked.
Bacon
Its fat adds flavour and helps the cake brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the cake until browned on both sides. The pan must be hot so the surface browns and forms a crust instead of steaming. Cooking it undisturbed until a crust forms lets the cake hold together when flipped.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper):

  1. Cauliflowerfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper. 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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