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Cabbage Soup

A soup made from blanched cabbage, butter, water, milk, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. In a saucepan, bring 3 cups of water to a boil.

  2. Wash the cabbage in cold water and trim off any dead leaves.

  3. Cut the cabbage into medium-sized pieces.

  4. Add the cabbage to the boiling water and blanch for 5 minutes.

  5. Drain the water from the cabbage.

Make the soup

  1. Add 2 quarts of water, 2 ounces of butter, pepper, and salt to the cabbage, and boil for 1 hour.

  2. After an hour, stir in ¾ pint of milk and bring to a boil.

Toast and serve

  1. Toast the slice of bread on both sides over the fire.

  2. Cut the toasted bread into dice-sized pieces and place them in a hot soup tureen.

  3. Pour the cabbage 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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the soup and becomes tender during the long simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the broth.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the flavour of the cabbage broth.
Bread
Soaks up broth at the end, giving the soup body and a toasted flavour.

The step that matters

Blanching the cabbage. Blanching in boiling water for a short time before the long simmer helps soften and mellow the cabbage's strong sulfur compounds, reducing bitterness and odour in the finished soup.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, 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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