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Cabbage and Bacon Soup

A hearty soup made with cabbage, bacon, turnips, carrot, onion, peppercorns, and stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabbage and Bacon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Put 2 quarts of water into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the washed and scraped bacon to the pot.

  3. Let it boil slowly for 1 hour, skimming the pot thoroughly.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Wash the cabbage.

  2. Soak the cabbage in hot water for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the cabbage.

Simmer and assemble

  1. Add the cabbage, chopped vegetables, and peppercorns tied in muslin to the saucepan.

  2. Let them simmer together for 2.5 hours.

  3. Remove the cabbage from the pot.

  4. Cut the cabbage into quarters.

  5. Chop one quarter of the cabbage into small pieces.

  6. Place the chopped cabbage in a soup tureen.

  7. Slice the stale bread thinly.

  8. Lay the sliced bread on top of the cabbage.

  9. Pour the boiling broth over the bread.

  10. Serve the soup.

Serve the bacon

  1. Remove the rind from the bacon.

  2. Dish the bacon.

  3. Arrange the remaining cabbage around the dish.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,505 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

Cabbage
Provides bulk and a mild, sweet flavour as it simmers in the broth.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat that flavours the whole broth.
Turnips
Add subtle sweetness and body to the broth.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and colour to the broth.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it softens during simmering.
Stale bread
Soaks up the hot broth, giving a soft, filling texture.

The step that matters

Boil slowly and skim the bacon broth thoroughly. A gentle boil with frequent skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth and taint its flavour.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, onion, bread):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, onion, 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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