Skip to main content
Main

Cabbage Soup

A cabbage and potato soup thickened with mashed potatoes, butter, milk, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 the cabbage

  1. Wash the cabbage.

  2. Soak the cabbage in salted water for 1 hour.

  3. Rinse and shred the cabbage finely.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the cabbage to the stewpan and stir until it absorbs the butter.

  3. Add enough water to cook the cabbage and stew until tender.

  4. Peel the potatoes.

  5. Slice the potatoes thinly and add them to the soup.

  6. Cook the potatoes until they are tender.

  7. Mash the cooked potatoes in the soup to thicken it.

Finish and serve

  1. Season the soup with pepper and salt.

  2. Add the milk, bring the soup to a boil, 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the body of the soup and, once stewed, gives it a soft, tender texture.
Potatoes
Break down when mashed, giving the soup body and thickening it.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and coats the cabbage as it begins to cook.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, rounding out the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Stewing the cabbage until tender. Cabbage needs sustained gentle cooking to soften its tough fibres fully. If it is undercooked, the soup tastes harsh and sulphurous and has a chewy texture.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, milk, 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipes