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White Cabbage

A pickled white cabbage seasoned with mustard seed, garlic, turmeric, and spices in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

White Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbages and salt them as you would red cabbage.

  2. Place the cut cabbage in a deep earthen pot, cover it tightly, and let it stand in the cellar for a week, turning it daily.

  3. Remove the cabbage and drain the brine on a coarse cloth.

Pickle

  1. In a jar, combine the cabbage with mustard seed, garlic, and turmeric.

  2. Boil the vinegar with long pepper, white pepper, cayenne, ginger, and mace, then pour it over the cabbage.

  3. Stir well and keep it covered from the air.

  4. Stir daily for a month 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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

White cabbages
Form the bulk of the pickle and absorb the brine and vinegar flavours as they stand.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that develops as the pickle matures.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savoury depth to the pickling liquid and cabbage.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and a mild earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the cabbage. Salt draws water out of the cabbage through osmosis, leaving it crisp and less watery. Draining the brine removes that liquid so the vinegar pickling liquid is not diluted and the pickle keeps its firm texture.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, mustard, garlic, turmeric, vinegar, pepper, 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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