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Red Cabbage Pickle

A pickled red cabbage with vinegar, salt, mustard seed, celery seed, horseradish, sugar, pepper, tamarack, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Red Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Sprinkle salt over the sliced cabbage and let it sit in the sun or a warm place for 3 days.

  2. Boil together ½ pint of vinegar and ½ gallon of water.

  3. Pour the boiling mixture over the cabbage and let it soak for 1 day.

Make the pickle and jar

  1. Once the cabbage feels crisp and the salt is out, mix mustard seed, celery seed, horseradish, brown sugar, pepper, salt, 1 quart of vinegar, tamarack, and chopped onions in a pot.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the cabbage.

  3. Seal tightly in jars and let it sit for a few weeks before using.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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 crisp, crunchy body of the pickle once salted and soaked.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, softening it and helping it take up the brine.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that mellows during the weeks of sitting.
Horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that deepens as the pickle matures.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling vinegar mixture over the cabbage. The cabbage must be well drained of its salty liquid and the brine kept hot so it penetrates the cabbage evenly. Pouring too little heat or skipping the salt-drawing stage leaves the pickle soft and unevenly flavoured.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, vinegar, mustard, celery, horseradish, sugar, pepper):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, mustard, celery, horseradish, sugar, pepper. 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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