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To Pickle Red Cabbage

A method for pickling shredded red cabbage with vinegar, spices, and barberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Shred the red cabbages very finely and remove the outside leaves.

  2. Mix the shredded cabbage with the coarse sea salt and tie it in a thin cloth.

  3. Let it hang for twelve hours.

Pickle and seal

  1. Place the cabbage in small jars.

  2. Boil the vinegar with barberries, ginger, black pepper, Jamaica pepper, and cloves.

  3. Once cooled, pour the vinegar mixture over the cabbage in the jars.

  4. Seal the jars tightly with bladder.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

  5. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 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 cabbages
Form the bulk of the pickle, giving crisp texture and the colour that the vinegar helps keep.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the shredded cabbage, softening it and concentrating its flavour before pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the vinegar brine.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat and aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Letting the cabbage hang after salting. Salt must draw out enough water from the shredded cabbage for it to soften and stay crisp in the brine. Skipping or shortening the hanging time leaves it wet and weakly flavoured, which can dilute the pickling vinegar.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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