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Chopped Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish with tomatoes, onions, cucumber pickles, mustard, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chopped Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, tomatoes, and onions into small pieces, but not too fine.

  2. Soak the chopped vegetables in saltwater for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Soak in vinegar

  1. Soak the drained vegetables in weak vinegar for three days, changing the vinegar each morning.

  2. On the fourth morning, add 1 gallon of vinegar, mustard, sugar, and turmeric to the mixture.

  3. Scald the same vinegar for three mornings.

Finish

  1. Chop the cucumber pickles.

  2. Add the chopped cucumber pickles along with celery seeds, black pepper, mustard seeds, horseradish, olive oil, and mayonnaise.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 gives it its crisp, chopped texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps keep it preserved.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seeds
Contributes pungent, sharp flavour to the pickle.
Olive oil
Adds fat, giving the pickle a richer mouthfeel.
Mayonnaise
Adds creaminess and fat, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables well before the vinegar soak. Water left after the saltwater soak dilutes the weak vinegar and can make the vegetables soft and the pickle watery, so thorough draining helps the vinegar work as intended.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, tomato, cucumber, mustard, celery, pepper, sugar):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, tomato, cucumber, mustard, celery, pepper, sugar. 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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