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Stuffed Cabbage

Stuffed cabbage is a dish made by filling a cabbage heart with breadcrumbs, spices, egg yolks, butter, and ham, then cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stuffed Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil and cool

  1. Parboil the whole cabbage for 20 minutes with a nice ham.

  2. Remove the cabbage and plunge it in cold water while wrapped in a towel.

  3. Let it cool, then carefully untie the towel and remove the heart of the cabbage, saving the piece you cut out.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mix the heart with bread crumbs, cayenne pepper, whole spices, black pepper, celery seeds, egg yolks, and butter.

Cook the cabbage

  1. If using a steamer, place the cabbage back together and steam over boiling water for 30 minutes.

  2. If no steamer, wrap the cabbage in the towel and boil for 15 minutes.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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 outer leaves that hold the stuffing and cook into tender wrappers.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Enrich the stuffing and help bind it into a soft, cohesive mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture in the stuffing.
Ham
Flavours the cooking water, seasoning the cabbage as it parboils.

The step that matters

Cooling the parboiled cabbage in cold water. Plunging the cooked cabbage into cold water stops the cooking so the leaves stay intact and easier to separate and fold without tearing.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, clove, allspice, celery, egg, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, clove, allspice, celery, egg, butter. 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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