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To Fry Cabbage

A dish of fried cabbage with pickled pork, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

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 ↓

To Fry Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. In a skillet, combine the chopped cabbage and pickled pork.

  2. Cover with hot water and fry steadily for 2 hours.

  3. Add salt and cayenne pepper, then fry for an additional 30 minutes.

  4. If the water boils down, add a little more, but not during the last 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer the pork to the center of a heated dish and arrange the cabbage around it.

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. Cabbage + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together919 recipes

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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 softens into tender strands during the long, steady cooking.
Pickled pork
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat that seasons the cabbage as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stop adding water during the last 30 minutes. Topping up water keeps the cabbage simmering gently, but stopping in the final stretch lets the remaining liquid reduce and concentrate flavor, so the cabbage ends rich rather than watery.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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