Skip to main content
Main

Chopped Pickle Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish with salt, mustard, spices, sugar, onions, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chopped Pickle Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Sprinkle the salt through the chopped cabbage and let it sit for 2 hours.

  2. Squeeze out excess liquid and dry the cabbage.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine the cabbage with ground mustard, mustard seed, cloves, celery seed, brown sugar, chopped onions, and cider vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chopped cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives it its crisp, fibrous texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out water from the cabbage, softening it and concentrating its flavor.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor and some texture to the pickle.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Boiling drives off water and lets the sugar and vinegar reduce into a thick, syrupy coating. Stopping too early leaves the pickle watery, while overcooking can turn the cabbage mushy and dull its texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, mustard, clove, celery, sugar, cider, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, mustard, clove, celery, sugar, cider, vinegar. 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.

More pickled cabbage recipes

Yellow 12Sweet 6Red 4Spiced 3 See all 87 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes