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Pickled Red Cabbage

A pickled cabbage dish made with salt, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and layer

  1. Cut the cabbage into quarters.

  2. Boil the cabbage until tender.

  3. Drain the cabbage and place it in a stone jar.

  4. Sprinkle ⅔ cup of coarse sea salt over the cabbage.

  5. Add the whole cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

  6. Cover the cabbage with hot vinegar.

  7. Seal the jar tightly.

Shred and salt

  1. Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage.

  2. Shred the cabbage finely.

  3. Mix the shredded cabbage with ½ pound of coarse sea salt.

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

Spice the vinegar and pack

  1. Boil 1 quart of vinegar with ginger, black pepper, and cloves, then let it cool.

  2. Pour the cooled vinegar over the cabbage in jars.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and provides the crisp, tender texture.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that preserves the cabbage and sets its tang.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the shredded cabbage, concentrating flavour and firming texture.
Cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Cinnamon
Contributes sweet, warm aroma that rounds out the pickling spices.
Ginger
Adds a bright, peppery aroma to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Salting and hanging the shredded cabbage. Salt draws water out of the cabbage through osmosis, which firms the texture and lets it take up the vinegar and spices instead of turning soggy. Mixing the salt in evenly and keeping the cloth tied tightly lets the cabbage drain properly during the 12 hours.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, allspice, vinegar, ginger, 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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