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Chopped Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish with onions, sugar, mustard, spices, and optional celery and nasturtiums.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chopped Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage.

  2. Pour boiling brine over the cabbage to cover.

  3. Chop and scald the onion.

  4. Cover the cabbage and onion and let sit for 24 hours.

  5. Squeeze the cabbage and onion in a cloth until free from brine.

  6. If too salty, soak in clear water for a few hours and squeeze again.

  7. Loosen and mix the cabbage and onions thoroughly.

Combine and pickle

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cabbage mixture with brown sugar, mustard, mustard seed, horseradish, mace, black pepper, celery seed, turmeric, and optional chopped celery and nasturtiums.

  2. Mix well and cover with cold vinegar, adding more vinegar if necessary after it has stood for a while.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky body of the slaw that soaks up the pickling flavours.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and mustard.
White mustard seed
Provides pungent, sharp flavour and a little texture in the pickle.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp heat that fades somewhat during pickling.
Cold vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and a mild earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Squeezing the brined cabbage and onion. Brine must be removed thoroughly, or the pickle becomes too salty; if it is still too salty, soaking and re-squeezing reduces the salt. Cabbage left wet also dilutes the vinegar, weakening the preservation and crispness.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, sugar, mustard, horseradish, mace, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, sugar, mustard, horseradish, mace, 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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