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Salad

Red Cabbage

A simple pickled red cabbage salad made with chopped cabbage, salt, spices, and cooled vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Red Cabbage

Why it works: Cabbage and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Finely chop the red cabbage and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Add spices to taste.

Pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar, then let it cool.

  2. Pour the cooled vinegar over the cabbage.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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 pickle, giving it a crisp texture and its colour.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar cool before pouring it over the cabbage. Hot vinegar softens the cabbage and can dull its crunch and red colour. Cooling it first keeps the cabbage crisp and bright.

“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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