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Cabbage Soup

A soup made from cabbage, water, butter, milk, and seasoned with pepper and salt, served with toasted bread cubes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Bring 3 pints of water to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Wash the cabbage in cold water and trim off the outer leaves. Cut the cabbage into large pieces.

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

  4. Drain the water from the cabbage.

Make the soup

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

  2. Stir in the 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 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 bulk of the soup and softens as it simmers into tender pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the broth.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the soup.
Bread
Soaks up the broth and gives the soup body and texture when served over it.

The step that matters

Blanching the cabbage before the long boil. Draining off the first water removes some of the bitter and sulfurous compounds that intensify with long cooking, giving a milder, cleaner-tasting 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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