Skip to main content
Main

Yellow Cabbage Pickles

Pickled yellow cabbage with turmeric, spices, mustard seed, celery seed, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Yellow Cabbage Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine and soak

  1. Halve the cabbage heads.

  2. Place the halved heads in a large container with the onions.

  3. Make a strong brine.

  4. Boil the brine.

  5. Skim the brine.

  6. Pour the brine over the cabbage and onions.

  7. Cover and let stand for 12 hours.

  8. Squeeze out the brine.

Make the pickling mixture

  1. Combine turmeric with enough vinegar to cover the cabbage.

  2. Cook the mixture until tender.

  3. Place cinnamon, allspice, cloves, mace, and black pepper in a bag.

  4. Boil the bag in cider vinegar.

  5. Add white mustard seed.

  6. Add celery seed.

  7. Sweeten to taste.

  8. Pour the mixture over the cabbage.

  9. Seal immediately.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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 crisp, bulky body of the pickle that holds the spiced liquid.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and a mild, earthy flavour.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp tang.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite to the pickling liquid.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth as they soften in the brine.

The step that matters

Squeeze out the brine. Removing the salty brine before adding the vinegar mixture helps the cabbage stay crisp and keeps the final pickle from tasting overly salty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, turmeric, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, allspice, clove):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, turmeric, cider, vinegar, cinnamon, allspice, clove. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes