Name: Pickled Cabbage.— I
Ingredients: 1 head of cabbage; coarse sea salt; spiced vinegar (made with vinegar, salt, allspice, whole peppers, cinnamon, ginger, and mace)

Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Cabbage.— I

Ingredients

1 head of cabbage
coarse sea salt
spiced vinegar (made with vinegar, salt, allspice, whole peppers, cinnamon, ginger, and mace)

Directions

Remove the outside coarse leaves from the cabbage.
Cut the cabbage into quarters and shred it finely.
Sprinkle the shredded cabbage with coarse sea salt and mix well.
Let it sit for 24 hours to drain.
Pack the cabbage into jars and pour the spiced vinegar over it.
Seal the jars tightly and let them cool.
This pickle will be ready to use in two weeks.

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.

Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,380 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,620 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, vinegar, allspice, pepper, cinnamon, ginger):

Clovefits better
Turmericfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, allspice, pepper, cinnamon, ginger. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.