Name: Pickled Cabbage
Ingredients: solid heads of cabbage; boiling water; grated horseradish; coarse sea salt; black pepper; red pepper; whole cinnamon; whole cloves; strong vinegar

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the cabbage very finely and place it in a jar.
Cover the cabbage with boiling water.
Once cooled, drain off the water.
Season the cabbage with grated horseradish, coarse sea salt, equal parts of black and red pepper, whole cinnamon, and whole cloves.
Cover the seasoned cabbage with strong vinegar.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Horseradish + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together515 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horseradish, pepper, cinnamon, clove, vinegar):

Mustardfits better
Beetrootfits better
Shallotfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, pepper, cinnamon, clove, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.