Name: Pickled Red Cabbage
Ingredients: hard heads of red cabbage; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 6 whole allspice; 6 whole peppercorns; cold vinegar

Why it works: Cabbage and allspice work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 443 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the red cabbage into fine strips and place in a stone jar.
Add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and 6 whole allspice and peppercorns to each layer.
Cover with cold vinegar and it is ready for immediate use.

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.

Cabbage + allspicetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together443 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Allspice + vinegartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,548 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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; fine shreds give it a crisp, tender texture once pickled.
Cold vinegar: Acidity that pickles the cabbage and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Coarse sea salt: Draws moisture out of the cabbage and helps it soften and season evenly.