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Cabbage, Pickled, Red

A pickled red cabbage made with vinegar, pepper, allspice, and salt, left to ferment for several days.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cabbage, Pickled, Red

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage, quarter it, remove the center stalk, and cut each section into very fine strips.

  2. Place the shredded cabbage on a large dish, sprinkle it liberally with coarse sea salt, and let it sit overnight.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar, whole pepper, and allspice (tied in a piece of muslin) together, then allow the mixture to cool.

  2. Drain the cabbage in an earthenware or enamel colander, then transfer it to a large jar and pour in the cooled vinegar.

  3. Let it sit for 3 to 4 days before using.

Serve

  1. For best results, consume within a short time to maintain crispness and color.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Cabbage + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together443 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the crisp, sturdy body of the pickle and holds its shape during soaking.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the cabbage and gives it the sharp, tangy flavour of the pickle.
Whole pepper
Adds warm, pungent spice to the pickling liquid as it steeps.
Allspice
Adds aromatic, warm spice notes to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting the cabbage overnight. Coarse salt draws water out of the shredded cabbage through osmosis, which softens it and lets it take up the vinegar. Skipping or shortening this rest leaves the cabbage watery and less crisp in the finished pickle.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, allspice):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, 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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