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Red Cabbage

Pickled red cabbage with vinegar, cloves, mace, allspice, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Red Cabbage

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 ↓

Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cabbage

  1. Slice the cabbage crossways.

  2. Sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over the cabbage. Cover with another dish and let it stand for twenty-four hours.

  3. Drain the cabbage in a colander and place it in a jar.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour enough white wine vinegar over the cabbage to cover it.

  2. Add the whole cloves, mace, allspice, and bruised cochineal. Boil the mixture and pour it hot or cold over the cabbage.

  3. If using hot, let it cool, then tie it down for storage.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 crisp, bulky body of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, firming it and concentrating its flavour.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives it its sharp taste.
Cochineal
Colours the pickling liquor and the cabbage a deep red.

The step that matters

Salting for twenty-four hours. The salt must draw out enough water from the cabbage so it stays crisp rather than soggy once covered in vinegar. Draining well before jarring also matters, since leftover moisture dilutes the vinegar and weakens preservation.

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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