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Pickled Cabbage and Onions

Pickled cabbage and onions preserved in vinegar, black pepper, sugar, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pickled Cabbage and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

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

  2. Remove the stalk and shred the quarters finely.

  3. Lay the shredded cabbage on a dish and cover with coarse sea salt, then let it sit for 2-3 hours to draw out juices.

  4. Squeeze the cabbage dry to remove excess salt.

Pickle the cabbage

  1. Boil ½ pint of vinegar with 1 oz black pepper and 1 teaspoon sugar.

  2. Place the cabbage in a jar and pour the cooled vinegar mixture over it.

Pickle the onions

  1. For pickled onions, peel and wash 1 lb of small pickling onions in cold salt water.

  2. Pack the onions in a jar and cover with 1 pint of vinegar and ¼ oz black pepper, adding a little ginger.

  3. Seal the jar and store; the onions will keep for a year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and, once salted, becomes crisp and firm as it loses moisture.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours both the cabbage and the onions.
Small pickling onions
Hold their texture in the vinegar and add mild, sharp onion flavour to the jar.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Black pepper
Adds warm, pungent spice that infuses into the vinegar.

The step that matters

Squeezing the cabbage dry after salting. Salt draws water out of the cabbage. Squeezing removes the excess salt and liquid, so the cabbage stays crisp and the vinegar is not diluted or overly salty.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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