Skip to main content
Main

Yellow Pickled Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with turmeric, black pepper, celery seed, ginger, mustard, mace, allspice, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Yellow Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Slice the quartered cabbage and layer it with salt.

  2. Let it sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, squeeze the cabbage and place it in a pot with the chopped onions.

Cook

  1. Cover with vinegar and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Add the spices and boil for an additional hour.

  3. Let it cool 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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 gives it its crisp, sturdy texture.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and a warm, earthy flavor.
Onions
Add savory flavor and moisture as they soften in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Squeezing the salted cabbage. Salt draws water out of the cabbage overnight, and squeezing removes the excess liquid so the pickle stays crisp and the vinegar brine is not diluted.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turmeric, pepper, celery, clove, ginger, mustard, sugar):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turmeric, pepper, celery, clove, ginger, mustard, sugar. 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