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To Pickle Red Cabbage

A fermented pickled red cabbage preserved with salt, vinegar, spices, and cochineal for color.

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. Slice the cabbage very finely crosswise.

  2. Place the sliced cabbage in an earthen dish.

  3. Sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over the cabbage.

  4. Cover the cabbage with another dish.

  5. Let the cabbage stand for 24 hours.

Pickle and seal

  1. Drain the cabbage in a colander and transfer it to a jar.

  2. Add enough white wine vinegar to cover the cabbage.

  3. Add whole cloves, mace, and allspice to the vinegar.

  4. Boil the mixture.

  5. Pour the hot or cold mixture over the cabbage.

  6. Cover the jar with a cloth until cool.

  7. Tie the jar 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
Forms the main body of the pickle and takes up the vinegar's colour and flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage so it softens and holds less moisture for pickling.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves the cabbage and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Cochineal
Supplies the deep red colour that the cabbage is pickled in.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the cabbage. Salt must draw out enough water before the cabbage is drained; too little salt or too short a rest leaves a wet, watery pickle that dilutes the vinegar and softens the texture.

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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