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Pickled Cabbage

A cabbage pickled in vinegar, sugar, spices, and turmeric, left to mature for months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and quarter it.

  2. Boil the cabbage in scalding water for 3 minutes, then drain.

  3. Cover the cabbage with coarse sea salt and let it dry in the sun.

  4. Shake off the salt and cover the cabbage in cold vinegar mixed with turmeric.

  5. Let the cabbage sit in the vinegar for 2 weeks.

Make the seasoned vinegar

  1. Prepare the seasoned vinegar by boiling vinegar, sugar, and spices for 5 minutes.

Pack and age

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the cabbage packed in jars.

  2. Allow the pickled cabbage to sit for at least 2 months 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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

White cabbage
Forms the crisp, sturdy body of the pickle that absorbs the brine.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture from the cabbage so it softens and takes on flavour.
White mustard seeds
Add pungent, sharp aroma that develops as the pickle matures.

The step that matters

Shake off the salt before adding the vinegar. Leftover salt would make the pickle overly salty, while the cabbage must be well drained so excess water does not dilute the vinegar brine.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turmeric, vinegar, sugar, mustard, ginger, clove, celery):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turmeric, vinegar, sugar, mustard, ginger, clove, celery. 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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