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Soup

On Some Ancient and Modern Soups

A cabbage soup simmered with bacon, sausage, spices and garlic, and served over slices of bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chevalley de Rivaz, Victor · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,451 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

On Some Ancient and Modern Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outside leaves from a couple of summer cabbages.

  2. Cut the cabbages into quarters.

  3. Put the cabbage quarters into a saucepan.

Add the flavourings

  1. Add a good-sized piece of bacon, cut into pieces an inch wide down to the skin, which is left intact.

  2. Add a few pork sausages, or better still some Bologna sausage or mortadella.

  3. Add a bag containing spices, sweet herbs, plenty of pepper, a clove of garlic, and salt if necessary.

  4. Add enough cold water to cover everything.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer until the cabbages are quite done.

  2. Serve with a few slices of bread under the soup.

  3. Add any amount of cleaned and boiled bacon or ham skin to the soup.

By Chevalley de Rivaz, Victor. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Summer cabbages (in the method)
Becomes soft and sweet as it simmers, forming the body of the soup.
Bacon (in the method)
Adds savoury fat and smoky meaty flavour to the broth as it cooks.
Sausages (in the method)
Release fat and seasoning into the water, deepening the flavour of the soup.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma that mellows and infuses the broth during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer until the cabbages are quite done. Cabbage needs long, gentle heat to turn tender and lose its raw bite. Stopping too early leaves it firm, while overcooking makes it mushy and strengthens its sulphurous smell.

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

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

  1. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  3. Cardamombetter flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, 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.

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