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Red Cabbage Pickle

A pickled red cabbage flavored with cinnamon, mustard, horseradish, chili, pepper, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Red Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Chop the cabbage, lightly salt it, and drain overnight.

  2. In the morning, squeeze out the juice.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Mix in the cinnamon bark, mustard seed, horseradish, chili peppers, and black peppercorns.

  2. Add sugar and cayenne pepper to the vinegar to taste.

  3. Boil the mixture and skim.

  4. When cold, pour the mixture over the cabbage.

Pack and store

  1. Place a small saucer over the cabbage to keep it submerged in the vinegar.

  2. Cover the crock.

  3. Store the pickles in the crock; they will be ready to use soon.

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. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + horseradishtop 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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the main body of the pickle and takes up the vinegar flavour as it sits.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture from the cabbage, softening it and helping it drain.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour that develops in the vinegar.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Draining and squeezing the salted cabbage. Salt draws water out of the cabbage over the night. Squeezing out the released juice matters because excess water dilutes the vinegar and weakens the pickle's keeping quality and crispness.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, mustard, horseradish, pepper, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, mustard, horseradish, pepper, sugar, vinegar. 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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