Name: Red Cabbage and Cauliflower
Ingredients: 1 head red cabbage; coarse sea salt; 1 gallon vinegar; 1 ounce peppercorns; 1 ounce mace; 1 ounce cinnamon; small piece of alum; optional: cloves, allspice

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Red Cabbage and Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the loose leaves from the cabbage and quarter it.
Layer the cabbage in a large jar with coarse sea salt, alternating layers.
Let the cabbage stand for several days.
Scald the vinegar with peppercorns, mace, and cinnamon.
Add a small piece of alum to the vinegar mixture.
Pour the scalded vinegar over the cabbage in the jar, ensuring it remains submerged.
Scald the vinegar mixture three to four times and pour it over the cabbage to tenderize it.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, vinegar, mace, cinnamon, allspice):

Clovethe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Gingerfits less well
Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, mace, cinnamon, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.