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Cabbage Soup

A soup made with cabbage, potatoes, garlic, butter, salt, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,517 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the cabbages, removing the green leaves but keeping the white leaves intact.

  2. Soak the cabbages in cold water with a little salt.

  3. Peel the potatoes and add them to the cold water with the cabbages.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil, adding 2 teaspoons of salt and the crushed garlic.

  2. Add the vegetables to the boiling water and cook for 30 minutes.

  3. Mash the potatoes in the soup, then stir in the butter.

Serve

  1. Serve with small squares of fried bread in a soup tureen, covering for a few minutes 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. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Cabbage + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together635 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Cabbage + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbages
Form the bulk of the soup and contribute body and a mild, sweet flavour as they cook.
Potatoes
Break down when mashed, thickening the soup and giving it a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma and savoury flavour to the cooking water.

The step that matters

Mash the potatoes in the soup, then stir in the butter.. Mashing the potatoes releases their starch, which thickens the broth. Adding butter after mashing, off the heat or at low heat, keeps it emulsified rather than greasy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, potato, garlic, butter. 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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