Name: Cabbage Soup
Ingredients: 1 white cabbage; 2 quarts water; 1 turnip, sliced; 4-5 potatoes, sliced; Salt to taste; Fried bread for serving; Grated Parmesan cheese (optional); Stock (optional for improved flavor); Ham bone or piece of bacon (optional for added flavor)

Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

Wash and slice the cabbage, removing the stalk.
In a saucepan, combine the cabbage, water, sliced turnip, sliced potatoes, and salt.
Cook for 1 hour.
If the soup is not smooth, use a whisk to blend it.

Serve

Serve with fried bread and grated Parmesan cheese 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.

Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together275 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together577 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Break down while cooking to give the soup body and a thicker, creamier texture.
Cabbage: Forms the main bulk of the soup and contributes its mild, sweet flavour as it cooks.
Turnip: Adds a mildly peppery, earthy note and some body to the cooked soup.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, potato, bread, parmesan cheese, ham):

Asparagusfits better
Spinachfits better
Leekfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, potato, bread, parmesan cheese, ham. 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.