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To Pickle Red Cabbage

A pickled red cabbage preserved in vinegar with spices and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Slice the cabbage crosswise and place it in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over the cabbage and cover it with another dish.

  3. Let it stand for 24 hours to drain.

  4. Transfer the cabbage to a jar.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, combine enough white wine vinegar to cover the cabbage with whole cloves, mace, allspice, and bruised cochineal.

  2. Boil the mixture and pour it over the cabbage, hot or cold as preferred.

  3. Cover the jar with a cloth until it cools, then seal it with leather.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and, once salted and drained, stays crisp while absorbing the vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage during the 24-hour drain, firming the leaves before pickling.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Cochineal
Natural red colouring that gives the cabbage its vivid colour in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cabbage. Salt pulls water out of the cabbage cells. If the cabbage is not left to drain for the full 24 hours, it stays watery, which dilutes the vinegar and leaves the pickle soft and less crisp.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, clove, mace, 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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