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Pickled Red Cabbage

Pickled red cabbage preserved in vinegar with peppercorns, allspice, mace, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,431 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the sliced cabbage in a jar.

  2. In a pot, combine vinegar, peppercorns, allspice, mace, and salt.

  3. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the hot liquid over the cabbage in the jar.

  5. Let it stand overnight.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

Purple cabbage
Provides the crisp, firm texture that holds up during pickling and turns vivid purple.
Cider vinegar
Supplies the acidity that sharpens flavor and preserves the cabbage in the brine.
Allspice berries
Add warm, aromatic spice notes to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Strain the hot liquid over the cabbage in the jar. Pouring the boiled brine hot softens the cabbage and lets the vinegar and spices penetrate it more quickly than cold liquid would.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cider, vinegar, allspice. 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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