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Cabbage Soup

A soup made with bacon, carrots, cabbage stock, bay leaf, pepper, salt, butter, flour, and hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Make the soup

  1. In a soup pot, combine bacon, grated carrots, cabbage stock, and bay leaf.

  2. Cook for 25 minutes, then skim the surface and remove the bay leaf.

  3. Add pepper and salt.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, rub together butter and flour, then add to hot milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into the soup and bring to a boil.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

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

Bacon
Adds savory fat and smoky flavor to the stock.
Butter
Enriches the soup and, with flour, forms a thickening base.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it a smoother body when mixed with butter.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture to the milk. Flour clumps if it is dropped into hot liquid unmixed. Rubbing it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse evenly, and the mixture then thickens smoothly as it heats.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

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