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Reb Cabbage

Pickled cabbage seasoned with black pepper, allspice, ginger, horseradish, and optional capsicums and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Reb Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Choose a fine, firm cabbage of middling size.

  2. Trim off the outside leaves and quarter the cabbage.

  3. Remove the hard stalk and slice the quarters into a colander.

  4. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt between the layers.

  5. Let it sit in the colander until the next day.

  6. Shake well to remove all brine.

Pickle and jar

  1. Put the cabbage in jars and cover with hot pickle made from black pepper, allspice, ginger, horseradish, and common salt mixed with vinegar.

  2. Add capsicums and cayenne if desired.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + capsicumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky body of the pickle that holds its texture in brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage layers, softening and firming it for pickling.
Vinegar
Acidifies the pickle, preserving the cabbage and giving it a sharp tang.
Black pepper
Adds pungent, warm heat that flavours the hot pickle.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the pickle.
Ginger
Adds aromatic, pungent flavour to the hot pickle.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cabbage. Salt draws water out of the cabbage through osmosis. Shaking out all the brine removes excess salt and liquid, so the vinegar pickle can flavour the cabbage evenly and the texture stays firm rather than soggy.

Swap the capsicum

The recipe marks capsicum as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, allspice, ginger, horseradish, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Capsicumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, allspice, ginger, horseradish, vinegar. 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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