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To Make a Garbure

A hearty French vegetable stew with cabbage, bacon, ham, veal, carrots, onions, herbs, bread, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Make a Garbure

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare good stock or broth.

  2. Blanch and wash the cabbage quarters, then press them dry and tie each quarter separately.

Make the stew

  1. Place bacon at the bottom of a large pot, then arrange the cabbage on top with pieces of ham and veal.

  2. Cover with slices of bacon, add carrots, onions, and herbs, then moisten with stock or broth.

  3. Let it stew over gentle heat until well cooked.

  4. Cut the bread and add it to the pot, simmering until the mixture thickens.

  5. Drain the cabbage on a clean towel and press them.

Layer and serve

  1. In a heatproof dish, layer the cabbage, sprinkle with cheese, then add a layer of stewed bread, repeating until the dish is full.

  2. Ensure the cabbage forms the bottom layer and is well sprinkled with cheese.

  3. Simmer gently in an oven or over low heat until hot and serve with additional 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. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and becomes tender and sweet during long, gentle stewing.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pot, adding savoury depth and flavour to the stew and broth.
Bread
Soaks up the broth and thickens the mixture as it simmers, giving the dish body.
Gruyere or parmesan cheese
Melts and browns on top of the layers, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky meat flavour that seasons the stewed cabbage and broth.

The step that matters

Stewing the cabbage gently until well cooked. Slow, gentle heat softens the cabbage's tough fibres and lets its sugars and flavours blend into the broth. Boiling hard can turn it mushy and cloudy.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, carrot, onion, thyme, bread, parmesan cheese):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, carrot, onion, thyme, bread, parmesan cheese. 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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