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Cabbage, Fried

A sautéed cabbage dish seasoned with salt, pepper, herbs, and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cabbage, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage roughly.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of herbs and spices.

Fry

  1. Melt the fat in a frying pan to prevent burning.

  2. Add the cabbage and stir until browned and dry.

  3. If desired, mix in cold carrots, grated apple, or onions.

Serve

  1. Serve with hard-boiled eggs, strips of toast, or fried bread as garnish.

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. Carrot + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + carawaytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and browns and dries as it fries, developing sweet, toasty flavour.
Dripping or other fat
Conducts heat evenly in the pan and carries flavour, helping the cabbage brown rather than burn.

The step that matters

Frying the cabbage until browned and dry. Cabbage holds a lot of water. Cooking it over steady heat until the moisture evaporates lets the surface brown, which gives sweetness and depth. Stopping too early leaves it soggy and steamed.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, apple, onion, caraway):

  1. Carrotthe original
  2. Turnipfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, apple, onion, caraway. 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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