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Bubble and Squeak

A dish of fried cabbage with sliced boiled salted beef.

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 the cabbage

  1. Chop the boiled white cabbage.

  2. Season the cabbage with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Fry the cabbage in a little butter until heated through.

Cook the beef and serve

  1. Slice the cold boiled salted beef and broil it until warmed, preferably medium-rare.

  2. Place the fried cabbage in a dish and arrange the broiled beef slices around it.

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

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together872 recipes

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

  4. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 bulk of the dish and browns in the butter for flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, helping the cabbage brown and carry flavour.
Cold boiled salted beef
Provides the savoury meat, which is warmed through under the broiler.

The step that matters

Frying the cabbage in butter until heated through. Cabbage that is only warmed stays soft and wet; frying drives off surface moisture so the edges can brown, adding flavour and a better texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the cabbage

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

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Onionbetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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