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Cabbage Soup

A soup made with shredded cabbage, onion, and semolina, simmered in stock and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

  1. Shred the cabbage, blanch, and strain it.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Put the cabbage and onion into boiling stock and simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the semolina and cook until clear.

Season and serve

  1. Add seasoning and pour over croutons placed 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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + semolinatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cabbage + semolinatop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the main vegetable body and mild flavor of the soup.
Onion
Adds aroma and gentle sweetness as it softens in the stock.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries all the flavor.
Semolina
Starch that thickens the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the semolina until clear. Semolina is a starch that must be fully cooked to thicken properly. If it is not cooked long enough, the soup stays cloudy and tastes raw and floury, and the starch may not swell evenly, leaving lumps or a thin texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, semolina):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, semolina. 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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