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Pickled Cabbage

A pickled cabbage preserved in a vinegar, ginger, pepper, cloves, and barberry brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbages and shred them finely.

  2. Mix the shredded cabbage with the salt and tie it in a thin cloth.

  3. Hang the cloth for 12 hours.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil the vinegar with ginger, pepper, cloves, and barberries.

  2. Let the vinegar mixture cool, then pour it over the cabbage in small jars.

  3. Seal the jars tightly with bladder.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together545 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, firming its texture and helping it preserve.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives it a sharp, tangy flavor.
Red cabbages
Forms the bulk of the pickle, providing crisp texture once salted and drained.
Ginger
Adds aromatic warmth that flavors the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting and hanging the cabbage. Salt must be mixed evenly through the shredded cabbage and the cloth must drain well. Water left in the cabbage dilutes the vinegar and can let the pickle spoil or turn soft.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, pepper, clove. 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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