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Pickled Red Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish made with vinegar, ginger, pepper, cloves, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbages and shred them finely.

  2. Mix the shredded cabbage with the salt and tie it in a thin cloth.

  3. Let it hang for 12 hours.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, boil the vinegar with ginger, black pepper, and cloves.

  2. Once the vinegar mixture is cool, place the cabbage in jars and pour the vinegar over it.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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 + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together545 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Red cabbages
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives its crisp texture and colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the shredded cabbage, firming it and concentrating its flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic note that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Black pepper
Contributes a mild, pungent heat that runs through the pickling liquid.
Cloves
Adds a strong, sweet-spiced aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar cool before pouring it over the cabbage. Hot vinegar poured onto shredded cabbage would soften its crisp texture and wilt it. Cooling the liquid first keeps the cabbage firm while it absorbs the flavour.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, ginger, pepper, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, pepper, clove. 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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