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Chopped Cabbage Pickle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Brine the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage as for slaw.

  2. Pour boiling brine over the cabbage to cover.

  3. Chop the onion.

  4. Scald the onion.

  5. Cover the cabbage and onion.

  6. Let sit for 24 hours.

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

  8. Soak in clear water for a few hours if too salty.

  9. Squeeze again.

  10. Loosen the cabbage and onions.

  11. Mix them thoroughly.

Season and pack

  1. Combine the cabbage mixture with brown sugar, mustard, mustard seed, horseradish, mace, black pepper, celery seed, turmeric, and optional chopped celery and nasturtiums in a large bowl. Mix well.

  2. Cover with cold vinegar.

  3. Add more vinegar if necessary after it has stood 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 crisp, bulky body of the pickle that holds up to the brine and vinegar.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent heat and a sharp, savory bite that develops as the pickle stands.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar and brine with sweetness and a deeper flavor.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the long steeping.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving the vegetables and giving them a tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine. Vegetables salted in brine hold a lot of salt; squeezing and, if needed, soaking removes excess so the pickle is not too salty, and thorough drainage keeps the vinegar from being diluted.

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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