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Boiled Yellow Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with mustard, horseradish, turmeric, and spices, boiled and layered in vinegar.

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 ↓

Boiled Yellow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the cabbage and onions in boiling vinegar for 15 minutes with salt.

  2. Drain well and set aside.

  3. In a bowl, mix the olive oil and ground mustard.

  4. Add vinegar to thin the mixture.

Pack and cover

  1. Layer the cabbage and onions in a jar, adding the spices between layers.

  2. Cover the entire mixture with cold vinegar.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and keeps a firm, crisp bite after scalding.
Onions
Adds sweetness and savour that mellows during scalding and pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the pickle.
Olive oil
Carries the spices and adds richness and a coating of fat.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps the oil and spices cling together.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat to the pickle.

The step that matters

Cover the entire mixture with cold vinegar. Vegetables exposed to air can spoil, so keeping every layer fully submerged under the vinegar protects the pickle.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, vinegar, mustard, celery, horseradish, sugar, turmeric):

  1. Cauliflowerfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, mustard, celery, horseradish, sugar, turmeric. 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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