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Red Cabbage and Cauliflower

A pickled dish of sliced red cabbage and cauliflower, salted and preserved in boiling vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Red Cabbage and Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cabbage and cauliflower and place into a colander.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with coarse sea salt and let it drain for two days.

Pickle

  1. After draining, place the vegetables into a jar and cover with boiling vinegar.

  2. Add slices of beet-root for color, if desired.

  3. For added flavor, boil whole spices with the vinegar before pouring it over the vegetables.

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 + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Provides the colour and a firm, crisp texture that holds up in the brine.
Cauliflower
Forms a firm, crunchy base that absorbs the vinegar flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, making them crisper and less watery before pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Draining with salt for two days. Salt draws moisture out of the cabbage and cauliflower through osmosis. Draining long enough keeps the pickles crisp and stops excess water from diluting the vinegar.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cauliflower, vinegar, pepper, corn):

  1. Broccolifits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, vinegar, pepper, corn. 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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