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Pickled Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with horseradish, salt, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Slice the cabbage very finely and place it in a jar.

  2. Cover the cabbage with boiling water and let it cool.

  3. Drain off the water.

Season and pickle

  1. Season the cabbage with grated horseradish, coarse sea salt, black pepper, red pepper, whole cinnamon, and whole cloves.

  2. 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.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Solid heads of cabbage
Forms the crisp, crunchy body of the pickle once sliced finely.
Strong vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Grated horseradish
Adds pungent heat and aroma that mellows as the cabbage pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cabbage and seasons it throughout.

The step that matters

Draining off the boiling water. Pouring off the water after blanching removes liquid that would dilute the vinegar and soften the cabbage. Letting it cool first keeps the cabbage from wilting while the seasonings are added.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. 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.

“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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