Skip to main content
Main

Red Cabbage

A stewed cabbage dish with ham, butter, stock, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and sausages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Red Cabbage

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 ↓

Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cabbage

  1. Combine sliced cabbage, ham, butter, stock, and vinegar in a stewpan.

  2. Set over low heat and stew for 3-4 hours until very tender.

  3. Add more stock, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  4. Boil until the liquid is reduced.

Serve

  1. Serve the cabbage on a dish and place the sausages on top.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and turns very tender during long, slow stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, mellow flavour to the stewed cabbage.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the cabbage keep its colour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Stock
Provides moisture for stewing and carries flavour into the cabbage.

The step that matters

Boil until the liquid is reduced. Boiling off excess liquid concentrates the flavour and stops the dish from being watery. Reducing too little leaves the cabbage soupy, while over-reducing can make it sticky and overly salty as the seasonings concentrate.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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

Stewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipesScalloped CabbageScalloped Cabbage16 recipes