Skip to main content
Main

Pickles

Pickled cabbage, carrots, turnips, and onions in a vinegar and spice brine.

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

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil a strong brine of salt and water.

  2. Simmer the cabbage, carrots, turnips, and onions in the brine for one minute.

  3. Drain the vegetables and place them on tins to dry over an oven until shriveled.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, mustard flour, ginger, long pepper, black pepper, cloves, shallots, and horseradish.

  2. Boil the vinegar mixture, then pour it hot over the dried pickles.

Seal and rest

  1. Once cooled, seal the jars and add more vinegar if necessary.

  2. Let the pickles sit for one to two weeks 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the firm, crisp bulk of the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the vegetables.
Mustard flour
Adds pungent heat and sharpness to the vinegar.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent spice to the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.
Cloves
Adds strong aromatic warmth to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables until shriveled. Drying removes surface water so the vegetables take up the hot vinegar without diluting it, keeping the pickle crisp and well flavoured rather than soggy.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion, vinegar, mustard, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion, vinegar, mustard, flour. 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.

More vegetable pickles recipes

Mixed 12 See all 3 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes