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Sweet Cabbage Pickle

A sweet and spicy pickled cabbage preserved in a vinegar and sugar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Sweet Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cabbage

  1. Boil the salt and water together, then skim the boiling mixture.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the sliced cabbage.

  3. Cover the cabbage closely and let it stand overnight.

  4. Press the cabbage with a coarse cloth to dry.

Make the pickle and cook

  1. Mix the onions, vinegar, horseradish, red pepper, sugar, garlic, ginger, turmeric, mustard seed, mace, black pepper, and cloves together.

  2. Add the dried cabbage to the mixture.

  3. Transfer everything to a stone jar.

  4. Place the jar in a pot of water and boil for about 4 hours.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and softens during salting and long cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage and seasons it before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness.
Onions
Add savory flavour and bulk to the pickle mixture.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and a mild earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Pressing the cabbage dry. Salted cabbage holds surplus water; if it is not pressed dry before mixing, the vinegar and sugar liquid will be diluted, weakening the flavour and preservation of the pickle.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, vinegar, horseradish, pepper, sugar, garlic):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, vinegar, horseradish, pepper, sugar, garlic. 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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