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Soup

Cabbage Hodgepodge

A hearty soup of bacon, cabbage, celery, parsnips, and carrots simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Cabbage Hodgepodge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Remove the rind from the outside of the bacon and place it in a pot with 1 gallon of water.

  2. Boil the bacon for about 30 minutes.

  3. Add the quartered cabbage, celery, parsnips, and carrots to the pot.

  4. Season with pepper, avoiding salt as the bacon is salty enough.

  5. Boil the soup for about 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve the bacon with some cabbage on a dish after the soup.

  2. Optionally, thicken the soup with boiled potatoes or pieces of bread.

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. Parsnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat and savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Cabbage
Becomes tender and sweet as it simmers, adding bulk and body to the soup.
Parsnips
Soften during long simmering and add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Carrots
Soften during simmering and add natural sweetness and colour to the broth.
Potatoes
Release starch as they cook, helping to thicken the soup if used.

The step that matters

Avoid adding salt early. Bacon releases salt as it simmers and concentrates during the long boil, so seasoning should rely on pepper and be checked only at the end.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, parsnip, carrot, pepper):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, parsnip, carrot, pepper. 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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