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Cabbage Soup

A simple soup of chopped cabbage, onions, butter, salt, peppercorns, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the cabbages and place them in a pot with quartered onions, butter, salt, and peppercorns.

  2. Add enough water to cover and boil slowly until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Add milk to taste before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Cabbage + milktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together599 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbages
Form the body of the soup and soften into a tender, mild base as they cook.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the flavour when added at the end.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, milk. 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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