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To Pickle Red Cabbage

A pickled red cabbage preserved with vinegar, spices, and cochineal.

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

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cabbage

  1. Sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over the sliced cabbage in an earthen dish.

  2. Cover with another dish and let it stand for 24 hours.

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

Pickle and seal

  1. In a pot, combine white wine vinegar, cloves, mace, allspice, and cochineal.

  2. Boil the mixture and pour it over the cabbage, hot or cold as preferred.

  3. Cover the jar with a cloth until it cools, then seal it tightly with leather.

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. 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
Provides the main bulk and, with its natural pigments, the colour of the finished pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage so it softens and takes up the pickling liquid.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives it its sharp flavour.
Cochineal
Adds a deep red colour to the vinegar and the cabbage.

The step that matters

Salting for 24 hours and draining. Salt pulls water out of the cabbage through osmosis. Draining well before jarring keeps the cabbage crisp and stops excess water from diluting the vinegar, which would weaken the pickle.

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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