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Pickled Cabbage

Cabbage pickled in vinegar with horseradish, spices, and optional onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Slice solid heads of cabbage very finely and place in a jar.

  2. Cover with boiling water and let cool.

  3. Drain off the water and season with grated horseradish, coarse sea salt, equal parts black and red pepper, cinnamon, and whole cloves.

  4. For red cabbage, slice thinly and sprinkle with coarse salt; let rest for 24 hours to drain.

  5. Add sliced onions if desired.

Pickle and serve

  1. Boil black pepper and allspice in vinegar, then pour over the cabbage.

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. Clove + allspicetop 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. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 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 crisp, bulky body of the pickle that absorbs the seasoned brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Coarse salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, firming its texture and seasoning it through.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that flavors the pickling liquid and the cabbage.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the vinegar pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Draining the red cabbage with salt. Salt draws water out of the cabbage by osmosis, softening and seasoning it. Letting it rest long enough lets the excess liquid drain, so the pickle stays crisp and does not dilute the vinegar.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, horseradish, pepper, cinnamon, clove, vinegar, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, horseradish, pepper, cinnamon, clove, vinegar, 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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