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Pickled Red Cabbage

Pickled red cabbage prepared by salting, fermenting, and preserving in a vinegar-ginger-black pepper-clove brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbages and shred them finely.

  2. Mix the shredded cabbage with the coarse sea salt.

  3. Tie the mixture in a thin cloth and let it hang for 12 hours.

Pickle and jar

  1. Boil the vinegar with ginger, black pepper, and cloves.

  2. Once the vinegar mixture is cool, place the cabbage in jars and pour the vinegar over it.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together545 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the main bulk of the pickle and gives it its crisp texture and color.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the shredded cabbage, softening it and concentrating its flavor.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Letting the salted cabbage hang. Salt must draw enough water out of the shredded cabbage to make it pliable and concentrated. Hanging it for the full 12 hours lets this moisture drain, so the cabbage absorbs the vinegar well later.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, pepper, clove. 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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