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Cabbage Soup

A cabbage and rice soup flavored with sweet oil, wine vinegar, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and rice work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 361 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage and set aside for salad.

  2. Chop the remaining cabbage finely.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine chopped cabbage, rice, and enough water to cover.

  2. Cook until the rice is tender.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad with sweet oil and wine vinegar.

  2. Stir in grated cheese before serving the soup.

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 + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together361 recipes

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

  2. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Vinegar + cheesetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  4. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Rice + cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the bulk of the soup and a mild, sweet flavour when cooked.
Rice
Absorbs liquid and softens, giving the soup body as it cooks.
Sweet oil
Adds fat and richness to the salad dressing, carrying flavour across the leaves.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad dressing and balances the oil.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and richness to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cook until the rice is tender. Rice keeps absorbing liquid after it is done, so it can turn mushy if cooked too long. Checking it often and stopping once the grains are soft keeps the soup's texture pleasant.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, vinegar, rice, cheese):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, vinegar, rice, cheese. 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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