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To Pickle Red Cabbage

A pickled red cabbage prepared by salting, draining, and vinegar with black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and slice it very thin.

  2. Sprinkle plenty of coarse sea salt over the cabbage and let it drain in a sieve for at least 12 hours.

  3. Press or shake out the moisture from the cabbage.

Pickle

  1. Place the cabbage into clean stone jars.

  2. Cover the cabbage with vinegar that has been boiled with black pepper.

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

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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

Red cabbage
Provides the main bulk and crisp texture of the pickle.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cabbage, leaving it crisp and less watery.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the cabbage and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Black pepper
Adds aroma and mild heat to the vinegar as it is boiled.

The step that matters

Draining the salted cabbage. Salt must draw out enough moisture for the cabbage to stay crisp and absorb the vinegar rather than dilute it. Thin slicing and a full draining period help salt work evenly through the shreds.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper. 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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