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Pickled Red Cabbage

Pickled red cabbage is a cooked cabbage dish flavored with butter, salt, vinegar, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,001 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the leaves from the cabbage and cut them in half.

  2. Slice the cabbage into ½ inch thick pieces.

Cook

  1. Heat the butter in a large frying pan.

  2. Add the cabbage slices, salt, vinegar, and chopped onion to the pan.

  3. Cover and cook over moderate heat for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

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

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens into tender strands as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cabbage cook without sticking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps the cabbage keep its purple color.
Onion
Contributes savory sweetness that deepens as it cooks down with the cabbage.

The step that matters

Cover and cook over moderate heat for 1 hour. Long, gentle covered cooking traps steam so the cabbage becomes tender throughout. Heat that is too high can scorch the butter and onion before the cabbage softens.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, onion):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, onion. 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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