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To Pickle Red Cabbage

A pickled red cabbage with salt, vinegar, beetroot, and optional cauliflower.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Slice the cabbage and place it in a colander.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with coarse sea salt and let it drain for two days.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the cabbage to a jar and pour enough boiling vinegar to cover it.

  2. Add a few slices of red beet-root for color.

  3. If desired, boil the vinegar with spices before pouring.

  4. Optionally, add salted cauliflower branches for a beautiful red color.

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 + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + cauliflowertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 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

Purple red cabbage
Forms the crisp, sliced body of the pickle that holds its texture after brining.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, firming it and letting it take up vinegar more evenly.
Boiling vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Red beet-root
Adds red pigment that colors the vinegar and cabbage.

The step that matters

Salting and draining for two days. Salt draws water out of the cabbage through osmosis. Enough salt and a full drain keep the cabbage crisp and stop excess water from diluting the vinegar or encouraging spoilage.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar. 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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