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Russian Soup

A cabbage soup with beef, suet, and sausage-like balls, flavored with herbs, butter, flour, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Russian Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Shred the cabbage into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Shred the onion and chop the herbs finely.

Make the soup base

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the cabbage, onion, and herbs without browning them.

  2. Drain the mixture and add it to the soup with the flour.

Make and add the balls

  1. In a bowl, mix the beef, suet, egg, pepper, and salt to form small balls.

  2. Fry the sausage balls until cooked through.

  3. Add the sausage balls to the soup and squeeze in some lemon just 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the soup and becomes tender as it cooks.
Butter
Fat for frying the vegetables gently, carrying flavour into the soup.
Flour
Added to the soup to thicken it slightly.
Beef
Forms the main meat in the small balls, giving them savoury body.
Suet
Adds fat to the meat mixture, keeping the balls moist and tender.
Egg
Binds the beef and suet mixture so it holds together as balls.

The step that matters

Fry the vegetables without browning them. Browning adds bitter, roasted flavours that change the clean taste of this soup. Gentle frying softens the cabbage, onion and herbs while keeping them pale.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, beef, egg, pepper, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, beef, egg, pepper, lemon. 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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