Why it works: Cabbage and peanut work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 79 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
Cabbage Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the sliced cabbage in water until perfectly tender, about 2 to 3 hours.
Rub the cooked cabbage through a colander to make it smooth.
Thin the mixture with water and raw peanut cream, then season with coarse sea salt.
In a small bowl, mix the white flour with a little cold water until smooth, then add to the soup to thicken.
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.
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Cabbage + peanuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together79 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Peanut + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,427 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cabbage + flourtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together978 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Peanut + creamtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together490 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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, once puréed, gives it its smooth, bulky texture.
- Raw peanut cream
- Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a creamier mouthfeel.
- White flour
- Thickens the liquid when mixed smooth and heated, giving the soup more body.
The step that matters
Mixing the flour into a smooth slurry before adding it. Flour dropped in dry or lumpy clumps and does not disperse. Mixing it with cold liquid first separates the starch granules so they thicken evenly when the soup is hot.
Swap the cabbage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peanut, cream, flour):
- Spinachfits better
- Welsh onionfits better
- Potatofits better
- Cabbagethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against peanut, cream, flour. 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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