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Cabbage Soup

A soup made from cabbage, butter, flour, bouillon, syrup, peppercorns, and served with Scotch collops or sausages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Remove the green leaves and stalk from the cabbage.

  2. Cut the cabbage into small pieces.

  3. Fry the cabbage pieces in butter.

Simmer

  1. Add some bouillon and syrup to the frying cabbage.

  2. Boil slowly to prevent burning.

  3. Add more bouillon and peppercorns.

  4. Continue boiling until the cabbage is tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. In another saucepan, bake the flour and butter together to thicken the soup.

  2. Serve the soup with sliced Scotch collops or sausages.

  3. If cabbage is hard to digest, boil it in water before cutting it into pieces.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together978 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cabbage + meattop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the body of the soup and turns mild and tender with long boiling.
Butter
Carries the frying flavour of the cabbage and helps bind the thickening mixture.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter before it is added.
Bouillon
Forms the main liquid of the soup and carries its savoury flavour.
Syrup
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury broth and cabbage.

The step that matters

Baking the flour and butter together. Flour must be cooked in fat until it loses its raw taste and smells nutty. Stirred in raw, it tastes pasty and thickens poorly, and lumps can form.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, syrup, meat):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, syrup, meat. 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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