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Cabbage and Bacon Soup

A hearty soup made with cabbage, bacon, spices, and a bouquet garni, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cabbage and Bacon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outside leaves from the cabbages and wash them in salt water. Cut the cabbages into one-inch pieces and remove the hard stalk.

  2. Scrape the bacon clean and cut it into fillets, keeping the rind intact.

Cook

  1. Place the bacon rind down in a three-quart saucepan. Add a muslin bag with pepper, cloves, allspice, and the bouquet garni.

  2. Add the cabbage and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, skim, and let simmer until the cabbages are well cooked.

  3. Add salt if the meat is not very salty.

Serve

  1. Serve with slices of bread in the tureen.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Cabbage + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbages
Provide the bulk of the soup and become tender during the long simmer.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky, salty flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering until the cabbage is well cooked. Cabbage needs a long, gentle simmer to soften fully and lose its raw, sulphurous bite. Skimming the surface as it comes to a boil removes foam and impurities, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, clove, allspice, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, clove, allspice, 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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