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Boiled Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage boiled with spices and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,876 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Boiled Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer cabbage in a container, sprinkling with coarse sea salt between layers. Let it sit overnight, then squeeze out excess liquid.

Cook

  1. Place cabbage in a kettle and cover with vinegar. Boil for 1 hour.

  2. Add sugar, turmeric, mace, cloves, black pepper, ginger, allspice, celery seed, mustard, and white mustard seed. Boil for an additional hour.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 softens as it boils in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, firming it and removing excess liquid.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that deepens during boiling.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the cabbage after salting. Salting draws water out of the cabbage; removing the excess liquid keeps the pickle from diluting the vinegar and helps it stay crisp rather than watery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, clove, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, clove, 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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