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Cabbage Fickle

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with mustard seed, allspice, cinnamon, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cabbage Fickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Quarter the cabbage and cover it with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain and dry the cabbage.

Cook the pickle

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine vinegar, mustard seed, allspice, cinnamon bark, and sugar, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the cabbage to the boiling mixture and cook for 30 minutes.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 softens during cooking, taking on the vinegar and spice flavours.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage during the standing period, leaving it drier and crisper.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, preserved character.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Drying the cabbage before cooking. Salting draws out moisture, and any water left on the cabbage dilutes the vinegar mixture and weakens its acidity and flavour. Draining and drying well keeps the pickle concentrated and prevents a watery result.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mustard, allspice, cinnamon, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, allspice, cinnamon, 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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