Name: Stuffed Cabbage
Ingredients: 1 large head of cabbage; Stuffing (as for chicken); Chicken or beef broth; Muslin for binding

Why it works: Cabbage and chicken work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 436 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Stuffed Cabbage

Ingredients

1 large head of cabbage
Stuffing (as for chicken)
Chicken or beef broth
Muslin for binding

Directions

Prepare

Boil the cabbage in water, then transfer it to cold water.
Prepare a stuffing similar to that used for chicken and place it between the cabbage leaves.
Lay a couple of cabbage leaves over the top and bind the cabbage with a piece of muslin.

Cook and serve

Boil the cabbage in chicken or beef broth until cooked through.
Serve the cabbage whole on the table.

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.

Cabbage + chickentop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together436 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage: Its leaves act as a wrapper that holds the stuffing in shape while cooking.
Stuffing: Fills the spaces between the leaves, adding substance and flavour to each bite.
Chicken or beef broth: Cooks the cabbage and adds savoury flavour as the leaves soften.

“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.