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Pickled Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish made with salt, spices, brown sugar, and vinegar.

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 Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves and tough parts of the stalks from the cabbage.

  2. Shave the cabbage and place it in an earthen jar or wooden tub.

  3. Sprinkle the salt over the cabbage and let it stand overnight.

  4. The next day, draw off the brine.

Cook the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine the cabbage, onions, mustard seed, ground mustard, celery seed, turmeric, mace, cloves, allspice, pepper, and brown sugar.

  2. Add enough vinegar to cover the cabbage.

  3. Boil the mixture until the cabbage stalks are tender.

  4. Cool the pickle and store it in airtight jars.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, once salted and boiled, becomes tender and crisp-soft.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, firming it and forming the brine that is drawn off.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, slightly bitter flavour that carries through the cooked pickle.

The step that matters

Draw off the brine after salting. Salt pulls water out of the cabbage overnight. Pouring off that liquid before cooking keeps the pickle from being diluted and too salty, and leaves the cabbage ready to absorb the spiced vinegar.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, mustard, celery, turmeric, 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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