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Yellow Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish flavored with turmeric, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Yellow Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Quarter the cabbage and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the cabbage stand overnight.

  3. Wash out the salt and cook the cabbage in weak vinegar until tender. Discard the cooking vinegar.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine ½ gallon of good vinegar, ¾ cup brown sugar, and 1 tablespoon ground mustard. Mix until smooth.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon each of whole cloves, whole allspice, whole black pepper, cinnamon sticks, mace, and root ginger. Boil for 5 minutes.

Pack and store

  1. Place the cabbage in a jar, sprinkling celery seed and white mustard seed between layers.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cabbage. Add garlic or onions.

  3. When cool, seal the jar. Store in a cool, dry place.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, tender body of the pickle once cooked and soaked in vinegar.
Good vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and a molasses note.
Turmeric
Gives the cabbage its yellow colour and a warm, earthy flavour.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and sweetness to the spiced pickling liquid.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps season the vinegar mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the cabbage in weak vinegar until tender. Cabbage must be cooked enough to soften its tough fibres so it absorbs the pickling liquid, but not so long that it turns mushy and loses its texture.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, turmeric, sugar, mustard, clove, allspice, 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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