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Cabbage Soup

A hearty beef and cabbage soup simmered with onions, celery, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine beef, salt pork, onions, celery, water, and salt. Boil for three hours.

  2. Strain the broth and remove the fat.

Cook the cabbage

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and sauté minced onion and chopped cabbage for five minutes.

  2. Add a pint of the strained broth and cook for one hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the meat into small squares, thicken the broth with flour, and combine with cabbage and meat in a tureen.

  2. Serve very 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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

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

  2. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or brisket
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and body as it simmers for hours.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury depth to the broth as it cooks.
Cabbage
Becomes tender in the broth, adding bulk and a mild sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the broth so it coats the cabbage and meat.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth and the cabbage mixture.

The step that matters

Thickening the broth with flour. Flour must be stirred into hot liquid smoothly, or it clumps. Cooking it briefly lets the starch swell and thicken the broth evenly.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, celery, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, celery, 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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