Skip to main content
Main

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
Jump to recipe ↓

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 as for slaw.

  2. Pour boiling brine over the cabbage to cover.

  3. Chop and scald the onion in the same way.

  4. Cover the cabbage and onion and leave for 24 hours.

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

  6. If too salty, soak in clear water for a few hours. Squeeze again.

Mix and pickle

  1. Loosen the cabbage and onions. Mix them thoroughly.

  2. Add the chopped onion, brown sugar, mustard, mustard seed, horseradish, mace, black pepper, celery seed, turmeric, and optional chopped celery and nasturtiums to the cabbage. Mix everything well.

  3. Cover with cold vinegar. Add more vinegar if necessary.

  4. Let it stand for a while.

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 bulk of the pickle and provides the crisp, crunchy texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent flavour and a slight bite to the pickle.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that deepens as the pickle stands.
Cold vinegar
Acidifies the pickle, preserving it and giving it its tang.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and a warm, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine. Cabbage left in brine holds salt; if it is not squeezed dry and soaked when too salty, the pickle will taste harsh and the vinegar will be diluted, which can weaken its keeping quality.

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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes