Skip to main content
Main

Bubble and Squeak

A fried dish of mashed cabbage and potatoes seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Bubble and Squeak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the cold cabbage and potatoes well with a ladle.

  2. Add pepper and coarse sea salt to the mixture.

Fry and brown

  1. Heat hot dripping or bacon fat in a frying pan.

  2. Turn the mixture into the frying pan, stir well, and cover.

  3. Once heated through, remove the cover, shape into a flat cake, and brown on both sides.

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 + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Cold cabbage
Provides the bulk and the sweet, slightly earthy flavour of the dish.
Cold potatoes
Binds the mixture together and gives a soft, starchy body that holds the cake shape.
Hot dripping or bacon fat
Conducts heat to the mixture and adds richness, helping the outside brown.

The step that matters

Browning the cake on both sides. The cake must be heated through under cover first, then left uncovered so moisture escapes and the surface can brown. Covering it throughout would steam the outside instead of crisping it.

Flavor stand-ins for the potato

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

  1. Cauliflowerbetter flavor fit
  2. Broccolibetter flavor fit
  3. Turnipbetter flavor fit
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipes