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Cabbage Soup

A hearty soup of cabbage, potatoes, turnip, and water, served with fried bread and optional Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and slice the cabbage, removing the stalk.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the cabbage, sliced turnip, sliced potatoes, and salt with 2 quarts of water.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook for 1 hour.

  2. If the soup is not smooth, use a whisk to blend it.

  3. Serve with fried bread and grated Parmesan cheese if desired.

  4. For added flavor, use stock instead of water or add a ham bone or piece of bacon.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together275 recipes

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

  4. Bread + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Potato + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 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

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the soup and gives it its main vegetable flavor.
Potatoes
Break down during cooking and help thicken the soup, giving it body.
Turnip
Adds a mildly sweet, earthy note as it softens in the broth.

The step that matters

Cook for 1 hour. The vegetables must be fully tender before blending or serving. Undercooked cabbage and potato stay firm and give the soup a raw, grassy taste and uneven texture.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, turnip, bread, parmesan cheese):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, turnip, bread, parmesan cheese. 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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