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Garnish of Braized Cabbages

A braised dish of savoy cabbage, carrot, onion, herbs, and bacon, simmered in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Garnish of Braized Cabbages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim, wash, and halve the cabbages.

  2. Boil them in water for 15 minutes.

  3. Refresh in cold water, drain, and place on a napkin.

  4. Cut away the stalks and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Tie the halves together with string.

Braise

  1. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with bacon.

  2. Add the cabbages, carrot, onion, and herb faggot.

  3. Moisten with broth to cover the cabbages.

  4. Cover with a buttered round of paper and lid.

  5. Gently boil on low heat for about 1 hour.

  6. Drain the cabbages, remove strings, and press in a napkin.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Savoy cabbages
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and sweet as they braise.
Thin layers of fat bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stewpan as the cabbage cooks.
Broth
Provides moisture so the cabbage braises gently and absorbs savory flavor.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic flavor to the braising liquid.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and depth to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Gently boil on low heat. Keeping the heat low and the liquid barely simmering lets the cabbage soften evenly and turn tender without breaking apart or becoming mushy. A hard boil can make the leaves ragged and waterlogged.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, carrot, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, butter):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, carrot, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, butter. 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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