Skip to main content
Baking

Cabbage Soup

A soup made from boiled cabbage, butter, flour, veal broth, pepper, salt, and hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Partly boil the cabbage and chop it finely.

  2. Fry the chopped cabbage in butter.

Make the soup

  1. Mix in the flour and add to the veal broth.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. Pass the soup through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the hot milk and serve immediately.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 gives it its main flavour and bulk.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour while the cabbage fries and softens.
Flour
Thickens the broth so the soup has body.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the savoury flavour.
Hot milk
Adds richness and softens the soup's flavour at the end.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1 hour. A gentle simmer lets the cabbage soften and release flavour without scorching the flour-thickened broth or the milk stirred in later.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, veal, pepper, milk):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, veal, pepper, milk. 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.

More cabbage soup recipes

Russian 7Savoy 5Beef 4Potato 3Red 3 See all 111 →

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes