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Pickled Red Cabbage

Cabbage pickled in a vinegar, sugar, salt, and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and cut it into quarters.

  2. Slice the cabbage thinly and place it in a large bowl.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Combine vinegar, water, sugar, salt, mustard seeds, peppercorns, and allspice berries in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the sliced cabbage and let it cool.

  2. Transfer the cabbage and liquid to a jar and seal.

  3. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cabbage + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Provides the main body of the pickle and its crisp, sliced texture.
Vinegar
Acidifies the brine, giving the pickle its sour flavor and preserving the cabbage.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard seeds
Add a sharp, pungent aroma and flavor to the brine.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot mixture over the cabbage. The brine must be fully boiled so the sugar and salt dissolve and the vinegar is evenly heated. Pouring it hot softens the cabbage slightly so it absorbs the flavor during cooling and chilling.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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