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Chopped Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish with onion, brown sugar, mustard, spices, and optional celery and nasturtiums.

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

Chopped Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage.

  2. Pour boiling brine over the cabbage to cover.

  3. Chop and scald the onion.

  4. Cover the cabbage and onion and let sit for 24 hours.

  5. Squeeze the cabbage and onion in a cloth until free from brine.

  6. If too salty, soak the cabbage and onion in clear water for a few hours.

  7. Squeeze the cabbage and onion again.

  8. Loosen the cabbage and onion.

  9. Mix the cabbage and onion thoroughly.

Season and pickle

  1. Combine the cabbage and onion with brown sugar, mustard, mustard seed, horseradish, mace, black pepper, celery seed, turmeric, and optional celery and nasturtiums.

  2. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar.

  3. Add more vinegar if necessary after it has stood.

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

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

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 holds the dressing.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and mustard.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent flavour and crunch to the pickle.
Cold vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its tang.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that lifts the sweet-sour balance.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and a mild, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine and checking saltiness. Cabbage that is left too wet dilutes the vinegar dressing and can taste harshly salty. Squeezing well and soaking in clear water if it is too salty keeps the pickle crisp and balanced.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, sugar, mustard, horseradish, mace, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, sugar, mustard, horseradish, mace, pepper. 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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