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Soup

Cabbage Soup

A hearty soup made with bacon or pork, optional meat, cabbage, carrots, turnips, celery, leeks, and optionally thickened with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a soup kettle, add the bacon or pork and optional meat.

  2. Skim the surface as it comes to a boil.

Add the vegetables

  1. In a pail of cold water, shred the cabbage and chop the carrots, turnips, celery, and leeks.

  2. Once the soup boils, add all the vegetables.

  3. Simmer until the vegetables are tender but not falling apart.

  4. Thicken the soup with a few mashed boiled potatoes if desired.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet bacon or pork
Provides fat and savory meaty flavor to the broth as it cooks.
Cabbage hearts
Forms the bulk of the soup and becomes sweeter and softer as it simmers.
Mashed boiled potatoes
Starch from the potatoes thickens the broth and gives it a fuller body.

The step that matters

Simmer until the vegetables are tender but not falling apart. Overcooking breaks down cell walls so the vegetables turn mushy and cloud the broth. Pulling them when just tender keeps their texture and shape.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, veal, carrot, turnip, celery, leek, potato):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, veal, carrot, turnip, celery, leek, potato. 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.

More cabbage soup recipes

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