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Crimson Cabbage Fickle

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with vinegar, poke-berry juice, spices, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Crimson Cabbage Fickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cabbage

  1. Quarter the cabbage heads.

  2. Pour boiling brine made from 1½ pints of salt and 1 gallon of water over the cabbage and cover tightly.

  3. Re-boil the brine and return it to the cabbage twice, allowing it to cool in between.

Pack and store

  1. Drain the cabbage and place it in a jar.

  2. Fill the jar with boiling vinegar, re-boiling it twice like the brine.

  3. Mix the poke-berry juice with the best vinegar and fill the jar.

  4. If using plain vinegar, spice it with black pepper, red pepper pod, ginger-root, bruised horseradish, and garlic.

  5. Cover the jar tightly and store it in a dry, cool place.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together719 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small firm heads of cabbage
Provides the crisp, firm body that holds up through brining and pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage and creates the brine that preserves and seasons it.
Poke-berries
Supply the crimson colour that gives the pickle its name.
Best vinegar (plain or spiced)
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and sharpens its flavour.

The step that matters

Re-boiling the brine and vinegar. Repeated boiling and cooling of the brine and vinegar helps keep the pickle stable and improves how well the liquid preserves the cabbage. Skipping the repeats or letting the liquid cool too early may leave the pickle less well preserved.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, pepper, horseradish, clove, garlic. 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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