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Cabbage Soup

A hearty soup made with cabbage, bacon, pickled pork sausage, carrots, turnips, onions, leek, celery, broth, and stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Wash the cabbage well and cut it into slices or quarters.

  2. Place the cabbage slices in a pan and pour boiling water over them.

  3. Let the cabbage steep for ten minutes to whiten it, then drain through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Place the bacon slices at the bottom of a stewpan.

  2. Add the cabbage slices on top of the bacon.

  3. Place the pickled pork sausage above the cabbage.

  4. Add the sliced carrots, turnips, onions, leek, and celery.

  5. Pour stock or meat broth over the vegetables until covered.

  6. Let it boil for two hours.

  7. If desired, add a potato one hour before serving.

Serve

  1. Cut stale bread into thin slices and place in a tureen.

  2. Pour the soup over the bread 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Spring cabbage
Forms the bulk of the soup and becomes tender and sweet during long simmering.
Bacon
Releases fat and smoky flavour into the stock as it cooks, seasoning the whole pot.
Pickled pork sausage
Adds salty, savoury meat flavour that deepens the broth during the long boil.
Stale bread
Soaks up the hot broth, giving body and a soft texture when the soup is poured over it.

The step that matters

Let the cabbage steep for ten minutes to whiten it, then drain. Blanching in boiling water briefly softens the cabbage and sets its colour and mild flavour before the long simmer. Draining well keeps the soup from becoming bitter or watery.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, turnip, onion, leek, celery, meat):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, turnip, onion, leek, celery, meat. 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

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