Skip to main content
Main

Cabbage Soup

A simple cabbage soup made with cabbage, onion, parsley, milk, water, tapioca, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cover shredded cabbage with boiling water and bring to a boil.

  2. Strain.

Make the soup

  1. Return cabbage to saucepan.

  2. Add boiling water, milk, onion, parsley, butter or fat, salt and pepper.

  3. Boil gently for about 15 minutes.

  4. Sprinkle tapioca and cook for about 10 minutes longer or until tapioca becomes transparent.

Serve

  1. Serve hot as quickly as possible.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cabbage + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 gives it its vegetable texture and flavour.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy, mellow body to the broth.
Tapioca
Thickens the soup as it turns transparent during the final simmer.
Butter or cooking fat
Adds richness and carries flavour through the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the tapioca. Tapioca must simmer long enough to swell and turn clear, which thickens the liquid. Added too late or not cooked through, it stays grainy and the soup remains thin.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, parsley, milk, pepper, 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.

More cabbage soup recipes

Russian 7Savoy 5Beef 4Potato 3Red 3 See all 111 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes