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Red Cabbage Pickled

A pickled red cabbage prepared with vinegar, peppercorns, allspice, ginger, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Red Cabbage Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the rough outer leaves from the cabbage and cut it in half.

  2. Remove the hard stalk and slice the cabbage thinly.

  3. Place the sliced cabbage on a large dish and sprinkle it well with salt.

  4. Tilt the dish to let the water drain away and leave it to drain for 24 hours, shaking and turning occasionally.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar and spices for 15 minutes, then let them cool.

Pack and cover

  1. Once the cabbage is drained, pack it into jars, pressing it down.

  2. Cover the cabbage with the cooled vinegar and spices.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cabbage + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together545 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky body of the pickle that holds its texture under brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, softening it slightly and seasoning it before pickling.
Peppercorns
Add warm, pungent spice that infuses into the vinegar.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic sweetness that rounds out the vinegar.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cabbage for 24 hours. Salt pulls water out of the cabbage through osmosis. If it is not drained thoroughly, excess water dilutes the vinegar and makes the pickle watery and less crisp.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, allspice, ginger):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, allspice, ginger. 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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