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Cabbage and Bacon Soup

A soup made with young cabbages, bacon, spices, and bouquet garni, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 and Bacon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outside leaves from the cabbages and wash them in salt water.

  2. Cut the cabbages into 1‑inch pieces and remove the hard stalk.

  3. Scrape the bacon clean and cut it into fillets, keeping the rind intact.

Cook the soup

  1. Place the bacon rind down in a 3‑quart saucepan.

  2. Add a muslin bag with pepper, cloves, allspice, and bouquet garni.

  3. Add the cabbage and cover with cold water.

  4. Bring to a boil, skim the surface, and let simmer until the cabbage is cooked.

  5. Add salt if the meat is not very salty.

Serve

  1. Serve with slices of bread in the tureen.

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. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Cabbage + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together919 recipes

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

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Bacon or salt-pork
Adds salty, savoury fat and flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Young summer cabbages or savoys
Provides the main bulk of the soup and becomes tender as it simmers.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface after boiling. Foam and fat rise as the water comes to a boil. Skimming them off keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting greasy or scummy.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, bread. 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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