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To Pickle Red Cabbage

A pickled red cabbage preserved with vinegar, ginger, pepper, alum, and optional beetroot or cauliflower.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 red cabbage thinly and place it in an earthen dish.

  2. Cover and let it stand for two days.

  3. Drain the cabbage through a sieve.

Pickle and store

  1. Boil vinegar with ginger, black pepper, and alum.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar over the cabbage and cover it tightly.

  3. Once cooled, seal the jar with leather.

  4. Let it sit for a few days before using.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cauliflowertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 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

Red cabbage
Provides the main body of the pickle and its red colour, which turns bluish-purple in acid.
Good vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Alum
Helps the cabbage stay crisp by firming its cell walls during pickling.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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