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Cabbage Bolt

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

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 Bolt

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim the outer leaves of the cabbage and cut the heads into quarters.

  2. Remove the stalks and wash the cabbage in cold water.

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

  4. Immerse the cabbage in cold water, drain, and press dry.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, place the beef and arrange the cabbage around it.

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

  3. Pour in 1 gallon of cold water, bring to a boil, skim, and season lightly with salt.

  4. Let it boil slowly for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the cabbage, cut into small pieces, and place in a soup tureen with the toasted French bread.

  2. Strain the broth, season to taste, and pour into the tureen.

  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. 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 bulk and sweet, mild flavor as it cooks slowly into the broth.
Beef
Releases meat flavor and gelatin into the broth during long simmering.
Bacon or salt pork
Adds savory fat and smoky, salty depth to the broth.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the broth.
Leeks
Add a mild onion-like aroma and sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Parboil and press the cabbage. Parboiling with the pork softens the cabbage and mellows its sulfur-rich bitterness, while pressing dry removes excess water so it does not dilute the broth.

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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