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Chopped Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish with onion, sugar, mustard, and spices, left to stand for 24 hours.

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 and onion

  1. Cut the cabbage as for slaw and pour boiling brine over it to cover.

  2. Chop and scald the onion in the same way, then cover both and leave for 24 hours.

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

  4. If too salty, soak in clear water for a few hours and squeeze again.

  5. Loosen and mix the cabbage and onions thoroughly.

Season and cover

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

  2. Mix well and cover with cold vinegar, adding 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 bulk of the pickle and gives it its crisp, crunchy texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Provides a pungent, sharp flavour that deepens as the pickle matures.
Cold vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and giving it its tangy bite.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that adds aroma and bite.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine. Thoroughly squeezing the cabbage and onion removes the salt brine so the pickle is not overly salty. Soaking and re-squeezing if it tastes too salty corrects an over-brined batch before the vinegar is added.

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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