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Cabbage Soup

A hearty soup made with cabbage, bacon, pickled pork sausage, carrots, turnips, onions, leek, celery, stock, and optional potatoes, served over 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 and slice the cabbage into quarters.

  2. Place the cabbage slices in a pan and pour boiling water over them, then let the cabbage steep for 10 minutes to whiten it, and drain through a sieve.

Simmer the soup

  1. Place the bacon slices at the bottom of a stewpan, then add the cabbage slices on top of the bacon.

  2. Place the pickled pork sausage above the cabbage.

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

  4. Pour stock or broth over the vegetables until covered.

  5. Let it boil for 2 hours.

  6. If desired, add potatoes 1 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the soup and becomes tender and sweet during the long simmer.
Pickled pork sausage
Adds salty, savoury flavour that seasons the broth as it cooks.
Bacon
Releases fat and smoky flavour into the pot as it renders at the base.
Turnips
Contribute body and a mild sweetness as they soften in the broth.
Stale bread
Soaks up the hot broth, giving the serving a soft, substantial texture.

The step that matters

Blanching the cabbage. Steeping the cabbage in boiling water for 10 minutes whitens it and mellows its sharp, sulphurous flavour before it goes into the pot. Draining it well keeps excess water from diluting the broth.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pork, carrot, turnip, onion, leek, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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