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Cabbage Soup

A soup made from shredded cabbage, boiled with water, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. Wash the cabbage and cut it into shreds.

  2. In a large pot, add 3 quarts of water and boil for 3 hours.

  3. Drain the water and continue boiling until reduced to 3 cups.

Make the soup

  1. Add the hot milk to the cabbage water.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour and mix well.

  3. Slowly add the hot cabbage water to the butter and flour mixture, stirring continuously.

  4. Bring to a boil and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cabbage + milktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together599 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 bulk of the soup and gives its main flavour as it cooks down.
Milk
Adds richness, creaminess and a mild sweetness to the broth.
Butter
Provides fat and flavour and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked with butter to form a roux.

The step that matters

Slowly add the hot cabbage water to the butter and flour mixture. Flour coated in melted butter disperses evenly when liquid is added gradually while stirring. Adding all the liquid at once lets starch clump on contact, leaving lumps in the thickened soup.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, 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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