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Pickle

A pickled mixture of purple red cabbage, beet root, and cauliflower with vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Quarter the purple red cabbage and remove the stalk.

  2. Slice the cabbage lengthwise and place it on a drying sieve.

  3. Sprinkle each layer of cabbage with coarse sea salt and let it drain for two to three days.

Prepare the vinegar and vegetables

  1. Boil vinegar with the spices in a muslin bag.

  2. Slice the beet root into pieces.

  3. After salting, cut the branches of cauliflower and place them in a stone jar.

Pickle

  1. Pour the boiling vinegar over the cabbage and cauliflower.

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. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + cauliflowertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 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

Purple red cabbage
Forms the main body of the pickle and gives it a firm, crisp bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the pickled vegetables.
Beet root
Adds colour and a mild sweetness to the pickle.
Cauliflower branches
Adds a crunchy texture and soaks up the flavour of the brine.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the cabbage. Salt draws water out of the cabbage layers. Draining long enough removes that moisture, so the cabbage stays crisp and does not dilute the vinegar when it is poured over.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar. 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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