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Pickled Cabbage

A vinegar-based pickle made with white cabbage, spices, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the ground spices in a piece of cloth and tie it closed.

Cook

  1. In a kettle, combine the vinegar, spice pouch, and chopped cabbage.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.

Store

  1. Transfer to a jar and let cool.

  2. Refrigerate; it will be ready to eat in a few days.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Provides the crisp vegetable body that the vinegar softens and flavours.
Clear vinegar
Acidity that pickles the cabbage and preserves it in the jar.
Ground cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses into the vinegar.
Ground cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Bringing to a boil and cooking for 5 minutes. Boiling briefly lets the vinegar extract flavour from the spice pouch and softens the cabbage, while keeping it crisp enough to stay pleasantly textured once cooled and chilled.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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