Skip to main content
Main

Bubble and Squeak

A British dish of mashed potatoes and cabbage with fried meat, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bubble and Squeak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes and cabbage together until smooth, then season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Fry the meat

  1. Heat a little fat in a frying pan and fry the sliced meat until browned. Remove the meat and keep warm.

Fry the potato cakes

  1. Add the potato and cabbage mixture to the pan and fry until browned on one side. Turn and brown the other side.

Serve

  1. Place the mixture on a dish, heat the gravy, put the meat in the center, and pour the gravy over.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cabbage + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

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

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

Boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the mixture and give a soft, starchy body that browns in the pan.
Boiled cabbage
Adds moisture and a slightly sharp, earthy flavor to the mash.
Cold cooked meat
Provides savoury flavour and substance as the main protein of the dish.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury richness when poured over the finished dish.

The step that matters

Browning the potato and cabbage mixture. Frying the mixture undisturbed until a deep brown crust forms on one side gives flavour through the Maillard reaction and helps the cake hold together when turned.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipes