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To Pickle Red Cabbage

A pickled red cabbage made with salt, saltpetre, vinegar, cloves, allspice, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Strip off the outer leaves and cut out the stalk of the cabbage.

  2. Quarter the cabbage lengthwise and cut it crosswise into thick slices.

Salt and drain

  1. Place the cabbage in a sieve and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and saltpetre.

  2. Let it drain for 24 hours, then squeeze until very dry.

Pickle

  1. Make a pickle with enough vinegar to cover the cabbage, adding equal amounts of whole cloves, allspice, and a little whole mace.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cabbage + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Cabbage + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and gives it its colour and crisp texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage so it drains and becomes firm.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the cabbage and keep its red colour during curing.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Squeezing the cabbage until very dry. Excess water left in the cabbage dilutes the vinegar and weakens the pickle, so the cabbage should be pressed dry after its long salt drain.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, clove, allspice, mace. 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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