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Cabbage Soup

A hearty soup made with cabbage, bacon or salt pork, beef, herbs, and vegetables, served with toasted French bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim the outer leaves of the cabbage, cut into quarters, remove stalks, and wash in cold water.

  2. Parboil the cabbage for 15 minutes with the bacon or salt pork.

  3. Immerse in cold water, drain in a colander, and press the cabbage dry.

Make the broth

  1. In a saucepan, place the beef and arrange the cabbage around it.

  2. Add parsley, celery, leeks, bay leaf, onions with cloves, carrots, and the bacon or pork.

  3. Pour in 1 gallon of cold water and bring to a boil.

  4. Skim the surface and season lightly with salt, then let it boil slowly for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the cabbage, cut into small pieces, and place in a soup tureen with toasted French bread.

  2. Strain the broth, season to taste, and pour into the tureen. Serve hot.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Cabbage + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Gives the broth its rich, savoury body as it simmers slowly for hours.
Cabbage
Forms the main body of the soup, softening into tender pieces during the long simmer.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the broth and the cabbage.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.

The step that matters

Skim the surface before the slow boil. Skimming removes foam and loose fat that would otherwise cloud the broth and taste greasy. Boiling slowly rather than vigorously keeps the broth clear and the beef tender.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pork, beef, parsley, celery, leek, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pork, beef, parsley, celery, leek, onion. 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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