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Oil Pickle Cabbage

Cabbage pickled in a mustard and oil paste with horseradish, celery seed, turmeric, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Oil Pickle Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Trim and quarter the cabbage heads.

  2. Boil the cabbage in a mixture of vinegar and water until a broom splint can be passed through them.

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, prepare a paste with the sweet oil, white mustard, black mustard, chopped horseradish, celery seed, turmeric, and brown sugar.

Pack the jar

  1. In a jar, layer the cabbage and cover with the paste mixture, alternating layers and covering each with good 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 softens during boiling so it packs into the jar.
Sweet oil
Carries the mustard and spice flavours and coats the cabbage, adding richness.
White mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the pickle sits.
Black mustard
Contributes a stronger, more pungent heat alongside the white mustard.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, biting pungency that intensifies the pickle's heat.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustards.

The step that matters

Boil the cabbage until a broom splint passes through. Boiling softens the cabbage enough to pack and absorb the paste; undercooked pieces stay firm and resist the flavours, while overcooking makes them mushy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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