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Cabbage Soup

A simple soup made with cabbage, water, butter, milk, and 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. Boil 3 pints of water in a saucepan.

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

  3. Cut the cabbage into pieces, not too small.

  4. When the water is boiling, add the cabbage and boil for 5 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Pour off the water, then add 2 quarts of water, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Let it boil for 1 hour.

  3. Pour in ¾ pint of milk and let it boil up.

Serve

  1. Toast the slice of bread on both sides and cut it into dice-sized pieces.

  2. Place the bread in a hot tureen and pour the soup over it.

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 softens into tender pieces during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, mellow flavour to the broth.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the soup.
Bread
Soaks up broth at the bottom of the tureen, giving body and a soft texture to each serving.

The step that matters

Pour off the water after the 5-minute boil. Discarding the first cooking water removes bitter compounds and sulfurous odours from the cabbage, so the final soup tastes cleaner and milder.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk, 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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