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Crimson Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage preserved in a brine of salt, water, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Crimson Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cabbage

  1. Quarter small, firm heads of cabbage.

  2. Pour boiling brine made from 1 ½ pints of coarse sea salt and 1 gallon of water over the cabbage and cover closely.

  3. Re-boil the brine and return it to the cabbage twice, allowing intervals for cooling.

  4. Drain the cabbage and place it in a jar.

Add the vinegar and spices

  1. Fill the jar with boiling vinegar that has been re-boiled twice.

  2. Mix the juice of poke-berries with the best vinegar and fill the jar.

  3. If using plain vinegar, spice it with black pepper, a pod of red pepper, ginger-root, bruised horseradish, and garlic.

  4. Cover the jar tightly and store it in a dry, cool place.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the crisp, firm body of the pickle that the brine and vinegar penetrate.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage and preserves it, firming its texture in the brine.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Poke-berries
Their juice adds colour and flavour to the vinegar that fills the jar.

The step that matters

Re-boiling the brine and vinegar. Boiling the brine and vinegar twice, with cooling between, is the step that matters most. Repeated heating helps reduce microbes, and the cabbage must stay fully submerged in the liquid so it does not spoil at the surface.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, ginger, clove, garlic):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, ginger, clove, 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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