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Cabbage Soup

A hearty soup made with cabbage, bacon or salt pork, beef, parsley, celery, leeks, bay leaf, onions, carrots, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim the outer leaves of the cabbage.

  2. Cut the cabbage into quarters and remove the stalks.

  3. Wash the cabbage in cold water.

  4. Parboil the cabbage for 15 minutes with the bacon or salt pork.

  5. Immerse the cabbage in cold water, drain it in a colander, and press it dry.

Simmer the soup

  1. Place the beef in a saucepan and arrange the cabbage around it.

  2. Add parsley, celery, leeks, bay leaf, onions, carrots, and the bacon or pork.

  3. Pour in 1 gallon of cold water and bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Skim the surface and season lightly with salt.

  5. Let it boil slowly for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the cabbage and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Strain the broth and season it to taste.

  3. Place the cabbage pieces in a soup tureen with toasted French bread, then pour the broth into the tureen.

  4. 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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Cabbage + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Celery + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the main vegetable body and mild, sweet flavour to the broth.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds smoky, savoury fat and depth to the broth.
Beef
Releases gelatin and meaty flavour into the long simmer, enriching the broth.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth as they cook down in the broth.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 3 hours. The broth must simmer gently rather than boil hard. Slow heat lets the beef release its flavour and gelatin while keeping the broth clear, and a hard boil makes it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pork, beef, parsley, celery, leek, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pork, beef, parsley, celery, leek, onion. 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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