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Chopped Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish with celery, onions, green peppers, mustard, sugar, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chopped Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine chopped cabbage, celery, onions, and green peppers in a bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let sit for 1 hour.

  3. Squeeze the mixture dry.

Make the pickle

  1. Add white mustard seed, ground mustard, sugar, and pepper.

  2. Cover with vinegar and boil until thick.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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 bulk of the pickle and provides its crisp, chopped texture.
Onions
Add savory depth and sweetness that mellows during cooking.
White mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor that mellows as the pickle cooks.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Celery
Adds a mild, fresh vegetal crunch to the mixture.

The step that matters

Squeeze the mixture dry. Salted cabbage and onions release a lot of water. Removing it before adding vinegar keeps the pickle from thinning and helps it thicken properly when boiled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, pepper, mustard, sugar, 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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