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Pickled Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish with onions, cucumbers, spices, sugar, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cabbage into thin pieces.

  2. Cut the onions and cucumbers lengthwise.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and hang in a sack to drain for 24 hours.

  4. Spread the mixture on a table and sprinkle with ground mustard, ginger, black pepper, mace, celery seed, and turmeric. Mix well.

Make the pickling liquid and pour

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and vinegar and bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the cabbage and vegetables.

  3. The next day, drain off the liquid, boil it again, and pour it over the cabbage.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  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

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and stays crisp-textured as its water is drawn out by salt.
Onions
Add pungent flavor that mellows during pickling and contributes savory sweetness.
Cucumbers
Contribute crunch and fresh, mild flavor that absorbs the pickling liquid.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp tang.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that deepens the spiced character of the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain off and reboil the liquid the next day. Reboiling the liquid before pouring it back restores heat to the brine and helps the vegetables take up the flavor and acidity evenly, so the pickle is properly seasoned and safely acidic throughout.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, cucumber, mustard, ginger, pepper, 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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