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Yellow Pickled Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with turmeric, black pepper, celery seed, cloves, ginger, mustard, mace, sugar, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Yellow Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Quarter the cabbage and slice it.

  2. Layer the cabbage with salt and let it sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, squeeze the cabbage and place it in a pot with the chopped onions.

Pickle and cool

  1. Cover the cabbage and onions with vinegar and bring to a boil for 1 hour.

  2. Add the turmeric, black pepper, celery seed, cloves, ginger, mustard, mace, sugar, and allspice.

  3. Boil for an additional hour.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool before using.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, once salted and softened, becomes tender and crisp-textured.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the mixture and sharpens its flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and a warm, earthy aroma.
Mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that complements the spices.

The step that matters

Squeezing the salted cabbage. Salting draws out water, and squeezing removes the rest so the cabbage can absorb the vinegar and spices instead of diluting the pickling liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turmeric, pepper, celery, clove, ginger, mustard, sugar):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turmeric, pepper, celery, clove, ginger, mustard, sugar. 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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