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Bubble and Squeak

A British dish of boiled cabbage and potatoes fried with butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with sliced cold boiled salted beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 boiled cabbage and potatoes.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a little butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the seasoned cabbage and potatoes in a pan.

  2. Place the fried mixture in a dish and arrange the fried slices of beef around it.

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

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

  2. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 white cabbage
Forms the main bulk of the dish and adds a mild, slightly sweet vegetable flavour.
Potatoes
Bind the cabbage together and add starch that helps the mixture crisp when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, helping the mixture brown and taste richer.
Cold boiled salted beef
Adds savoury meaty flavour and is fried alongside the vegetables for extra texture.

The step that matters

Fry the seasoned cabbage and potatoes in a pan. The mixture needs enough fat and a hot pan to brown on the surface. If it is crowded or cooked too gently, it steams and turns soft and grey instead of crisp.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, butter, beef. 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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