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Cabbage a LA Dame Simone

Cabbage à la Dame Simone is a stew of blanched cabbages stuffed with veal farce, wrapped in bacon, and served with a reduced gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 a LA Dame Simone

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbages

  1. Blanch the cabbages or half boil them, then place them in cold water.

  2. Prepare the veal farce.

  3. Remove the cabbages from the water, drain them, and fill each cabbage with a little veal farce.

  4. Tie each cabbage with kitchen twine to secure the farce inside.

Stew and make the gravy

  1. Layer the cabbages between slices of fat bacon in a stewpan.

  2. Stew gently until well done.

  3. Remove the cabbages to drain and pass the cooking liquid through a sieve.

  4. Skim off the fat and reduce the liquid over heat until strong.

Serve

  1. Place the cabbages on a serving dish and pour the gravy over them.

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. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cabbage + vealtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together252 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

Savoy cabbages
Form the outer leaves that wrap the farce and hold its shape during stewing.
Veal farce
Provides the savoury, moist filling that sits inside each cabbage.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the cabbages and the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently until well done. Gentle heat lets the cabbage become tender and the farce cook through without boiling apart. Vigorous boiling can break the leaves open and toughen the filling.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, 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.

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