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Soup

Cabbage Soup

A simple soup made with cabbage, water, milk, butter, parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and chop it.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

  3. Fry the cabbage until it starts to turn yellow.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the chopped cabbage to a saucepan with parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the parsley.

  4. Pour in the milk.

  5. Boil for an additional 15 minutes.

  6. Serve very hot.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Cabbage + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the body of the soup, becoming tender and sweet as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the cabbage brown lightly when fried.
Sweet milk
Adds creaminess and a mellow, rounded flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Frying the cabbage until it starts to turn yellow. Frying in butter starts browning the cabbage surface, which adds a deeper, sweeter flavor. Stopping too early leaves the taste flat, while overcooking can make it bitter.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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