Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Cabbage

A fermented cabbage and onion mixture seasoned with salt, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and rest

  1. Pack the chopped cabbage and onions in alternate layers, sprinkling coarse sea salt between each layer. Let sit overnight.

Pack and weigh

  1. Scald the vinegar and add the sugar, mustard, pepper, and cinnamon.

  2. Pound the cabbage mixture with a wooden beetle until compact, adding more cabbage as needed and pounding each layer down.

  3. Cover with cabbage leaves, then a clean cloth, a board, and a heavy stone to weigh it down.

Ferment

  1. Store in a cool cellar to ferment for two weeks.

  2. Weekly, check for scum, remove it, wash the cloth, board, and stone, and clean the sides of the container before replacing everything.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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 gives it a crisp, crunchy texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma that mellow during the long salted rest and fermentation.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and softens the overall flavour.
Ground mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that gives the pickle depth.

The step that matters

Pack the layers firmly. Pounding the cabbage until compact drives out air and keeps it submerged in brine, which limits spoilage and supports a proper fermentation. Loose packing lets the surface spoil.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, cinnamon. 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.

More pickled cabbage recipes

Yellow 12Sweet 6Red 4Spiced 3 See all 87 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes