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To Pickle Red Cabbage

Pickled cabbage with vinegar, salt, and beetroot for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Slice the cabbage into a colander and sprinkle each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it drain for two days.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the cabbage to a jar and pour in enough boiling vinegar to cover it.

  2. Add a few slices of red beetroot for color.

  3. For added flavor, boil the vinegar with spices before pouring 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. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Purple red cabbage
Provides the crisp texture and the red-purple color that the pickle is known for.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage layers, making them crisp and firmer for pickling.
Vinegar
Its acidity sharpens the flavor and keeps the cabbage tangy and preserved.
Red beetroot
Adds extra red color to the vinegar and the cabbage.

The step that matters

Cover the cabbage fully with boiling vinegar. Cabbage left exposed above the liquid does not pickle evenly and can spoil. Keeping every piece submerged ensures the acidic liquid reaches all of it.

“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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