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Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish made with cabbage, green peppers, mustard seed, horseradish, sugar, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage and green peppers finely.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the cabbage, green peppers, mustard seed, horseradish, sugar, and coarse sea salt.

Pickle

  1. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar.

  2. Let it sit for three days before using.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 provides its crisp, crunchy texture.
Cold vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and giving it a sharp, tangy flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cabbage, helping it soften and absorb the pickling flavors.
Horseradish
Adds a pungent, sharp heat that deepens as the pickle matures.

The step that matters

Covering with cold vinegar. The vinegar must fully cover the mixture so no vegetables are exposed to air, which keeps the pickle from spoiling and holding its texture during the three-day rest.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, horseradish, 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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