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Pickled Red Cabbage

Pickled red cabbage made by layering cabbage strips with salt, allspice, peppercorns, and cold vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and allspice work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 443 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the red cabbage into fine strips and place in a stone jar.

  2. Add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, 6 whole allspice, and 6 whole peppercorns to each layer.

  3. Cover the cabbage with cold vinegar.

  4. It is ready for immediate use.

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 + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Provides the main bulk and crisp texture, and its pigments turn pink-purple in the acid.
Cold vinegar
Adds sourness and acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives it its pickled flavour.
Whole allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that infuse into the cabbage.
Whole peppercorns
Adds a mild, pungent aroma that complements the vinegar and spices.

The step that matters

Cover the cabbage with cold vinegar. The cabbage must stay fully submerged in the acid. Any exposed pieces are not protected by the vinegar and can spoil, and submersion lets the acid and spices penetrate evenly.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar. 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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