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Spiced Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with vinegar, sugar, cloves, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Spiced Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, cloves, pepper, and salt in a pot.

  2. Add the cut cabbage and cover.

  3. Cook slowly until the cabbage is tender.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Clove + cabbagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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

Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the sweet and spiced flavours and helps keep the cabbage's texture.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cabbage
Forms the body of the dish and softens into a tender, moist vegetable as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the cabbage is tender. Gentle heat lets the cabbage soften evenly and absorb the spiced vinegar liquid. High heat can scorch the liquid and leave the cabbage unevenly cooked or tough in places.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, clove, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, 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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