Skip to main content
Main

Cabbage Soup

A simple soup made with cabbage, carrots, onions, bacon, and stock, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the cabbage, cut it up, and drain it.

  2. Line a stew pan with the bacon.

  3. Add the cabbage, carrots, and onions to the pan.

Cook

  1. Moisten with skimmings from the stock and simmer gently until the cabbage is tender.

  2. Add the stock and stew softly for 30 minutes, skimming off any fat.

  3. Season to taste 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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + oniontop 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

Bacon
Lines the pan and releases fat that flavours the soup as it cooks.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the soup and turns tender during slow simmering.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the soup as they soften.
Onions
Build savoury depth as they soften and sweeten in the pan.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim the fat. A gentle simmer keeps the cabbage tender without breaking it up or making the broth cloudy. Skimming removes rendered bacon fat, which would otherwise make the soup greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, carrot, pepper):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, carrot, pepper. 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.

More cabbage soup recipes

Russian 7Savoy 5Beef 4Potato 3Red 3 See all 111 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes