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To Pickle Red Cabbage

Pickled red cabbage preserved in boiling vinegar with peppercorns, ginger, and optional chilies, beetroot, or onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 377 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the coarse outer leaves from the cabbage and cut it into quarters, removing the stem.

  2. Slice the cabbage into strips about ¼ inch wide.

  3. Layer the cabbage strips in a deep dish, sprinkling salt between each layer, and let it sit for one day.

  4. Drain the cabbage until the juice runs out.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place the drained cabbage in a jar and pour boiling vinegar over it.

  2. Season with peppercorns, ginger, and optional chilies.

  3. Cover the jar lightly with a towel until it cools, then seal with bladder and leather.

  4. For added flavor, boil beetroot for about two hours, peel, slice, and add to the jar with the cabbage.

  5. You can also add slices of onion if desired.

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 + beetroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 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. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  4. Beetroot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,261 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + beetroottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together155 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

Red cabbage
Forms the main body of the pickle, staying crisp as it is salted and soaked.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, softening it and concentrating its flavor before pickling.
Boiling vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp taste.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the cabbage. Enough salt must be layered in and the cabbage fully drained so excess water is removed; otherwise the brine dilutes, the pickle turns soft, and spoilage becomes more likely.

Swap the beetroot

The recipe marks beetroot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, vinegar, ginger, pepper, onion):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

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