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Pickle Cabbage

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickle Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle the shaved cabbages and onions with salt and let them stand overnight.

Make the pickle

  1. Drain the vegetables and add the peppers, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

  2. Tie the ground spices in small sacks for easy removal.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and let it simmer until well heated through.

Jar

  1. To keep pickles from getting soft, add a few grape leaves to the jar.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red cabbages
Forms the bulk of the pickle and holds its crisp texture when salted and simmered.
Onions
Add sharpness and sweetness that balance the vinegar and sugar.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and softens the overall flavour.
Green and red peppers
Add crunch and mild sweetness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Salting overnight. Salt draws water out of the cabbage and onions through osmosis, so they wilt slightly and absorb less liquid later. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves the pickle watery and less crisp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, coffee, sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, coffee, sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon. 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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