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Stewed Red Cabbage a LA Flamande

A stew of red cabbage cooked with meat, stock, and red wine, thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and corn work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 234 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Stewed Red Cabbage a LA Flamande

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Prepare the red cabbage as directed in the Stuffed Cabbage recipe.

  2. Stuff the cabbage with the force-meat.

Stew

  1. Cover the cabbage with stock and red wine.

  2. Stew gently for 3 to 4 hours until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Dish the cabbage on a round plate.

  2. Boil the sauce briskly for a few minutes.

  3. Blend corn-starch with cold water.

  4. Stir the blended mixture into the sauce.

  5. Boil the sauce for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  6. Strain the sauce.

  7. Pour the strained sauce over the cabbage.

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 + corntop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Meat + corntop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + red winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cabbage + red winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cabbage + meattop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Force-meat of mutton, veal, or sausage-meat
Fills the cabbage, adding savoury richness and moisture as it cooks inside the leaves.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that softens the cabbage and flavours the sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stewing liquid and sauce.
Corn-starch
Thickens the sauce when boiled, giving it body and a glossy coating.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Cornstarch only thickens fully when boiled, and stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and floury.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, red wine, corn):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, red wine, corn. 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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