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Pickled White Cabbage

A fermented cabbage dish flavored with onions, vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled White Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cabbage

  1. Layer quartered cabbage and salt in a container and let it sit overnight.

  2. In the morning, squeeze the cabbage and place it in a pot with chopped onions and enough vinegar to cover.

Cook the pickle

  1. Boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Add turmeric, black pepper, celery seed, cloves, allspice, ginger, mace, and brown sugar.

  3. Boil for an additional 30 minutes.

Finish

  1. Stir in prepared mustard with the other ingredients.

  2. Let it cool 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Turmeric + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Turmeric + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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; salting and squeezing it firms the texture and removes excess water.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the cabbage and onions and gives the pickle its tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Onions
Adds savoury body and softens into the vinegar during boiling.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and an earthy flavour.
Prepared mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that rounds out the spices.

The step that matters

Squeezing the salted cabbage. Salt draws water out of the cabbage overnight. Squeezing off the remaining liquid keeps the cabbage firm and stops it from diluting the vinegar, so the pickle keeps its strength and crunch.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, vinegar, turmeric, pepper, celery, clove, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, turmeric, pepper, celery, clove, allspice. 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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