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Cabbage and Bacon Soup

A hearty soup of bacon, cabbage, turnips, carrot, onion, peppercorns, and stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabbage and Bacon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash and scrape the bacon.

  2. Place the bacon in a saucepan with 2 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  3. Reduce heat and let the bacon simmer for 1 hour, skimming the pot as needed.

  4. Wash the cabbage and soak it in hot water for 30 minutes, then drain.

  5. Add the cabbage, chopped vegetables, and peppercorns tied in muslin to the saucepan.

  6. Simmer everything together for 2.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the cabbage, cut it into quarters, and chop one quarter into small pieces.

  2. Place the chopped cabbage in a soup tureen, slice the stale bread thinly, and lay it on top.

  3. Pour the boiling broth over the bread and serve.

  4. Dish the bacon, remove the rind, and arrange the remaining cabbage around the dish.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 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

Bacon
Flavors the broth with smoky, salty fat as it simmers.
Cabbage
Adds body and sweet, mild vegetable flavor to the soup.
Stale bread
Soaks up the hot broth, giving the soup a softer, more substantial texture.
Turnips
Contribute earthy sweetness and body to the simmered broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the bacon broth. Fat and fine impurities rise to the surface during simmering. Skimming them keeps the broth clear and prevents a greasy, cloudy soup.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, onion, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, bread. 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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