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Pickled White Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with onions, vinegar, spices, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled White Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Layer quartered cabbage with coarse sea salt and let it sit overnight.

  2. In the morning, squeeze the cabbage and place it in a pot with chopped onions and vinegar.

Cook the pickle

  1. Boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Add turmeric, black pepper, celery seed, cloves, allspice, ginger, mace, and brown sugar.

  3. Stir in prepared mustard with the other ingredients.

  4. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Cool

  1. Let it cool before using.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Turmeric + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 becomes tender and crisp-textured as it cooks in vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness and adds depth of flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage overnight, so it softens less and holds texture in the pickle.
Prepared mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that rounds out the spices.

The step that matters

Squeezing the salted cabbage. Salting draws out a lot of water; if the cabbage is not squeezed well, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and weakens both flavour and preservation.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, turmeric, pepper, celery, clove, allspice. 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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