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Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage dish with onions, sweet red peppers, vinegar, mustard, sugar, spices, and cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Layer the cabbage, onions, and peppers in a container and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Let it sit overnight.

  2. In the morning, pour boiling water over the mixture and squeeze out the liquid. Repeat this step.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, yellow mustard, sugar, white mustard seed, celery seed, and the muslin bag with turmeric. Bring to a boil.

  2. Add the cabbage mixture to the boiling vinegar and cook until it begins to clear. Remove from heat and let it sit overnight.

Pack and seal

  1. The next day, reheat the mixture. Pack it into jars and seal.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives it a crisp, sturdy texture.
Onions
Add savory flavour and aroma that blend into the vinegar brine.
Sweet red peppers
Add sweetness, colour, and mild flavour to the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, softening them and concentrating their flavour.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the salted vegetables. Salt draws water out of the cabbage, onions, and peppers overnight. Rinsing with boiling water and squeezing removes excess liquid and salt, so the pickle stays crisp and is not overly salty or watery once it is packed in vinegar.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, vinegar, mustard, sugar, celery, turmeric. 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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