Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Cabbage

A pickled cabbage preserved with salt, vinegar, pepper, allspice, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pickled Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and cut it in half.

  2. Remove the stalk and shred the cabbage into narrow slices.

  3. Sprinkle the cabbage with salt and let it sit in a pan for 2 days.

  4. Drain the cabbage until completely dry.

Make the pickle

  1. Prepare the pickle by infusing the pepper, allspice, and ginger in the vinegar for 3 days in a sealed jar by the fire.

  2. Strain the pickle to remove solids and let it cool.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the cabbage lightly into jars until about ¾ full.

  2. Pour the cooled pickle over the cabbage in the jars and seal them properly.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Allspice + capsicumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,862 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and provides its crisp, shredded texture.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, softening it and concentrating its flavour before pickling.
Strong vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Ground pepper
Adds warm, pungent spice that flavours the infused vinegar.
Ground allspice
Contributes aromatic, warm spice notes to the infused vinegar.

The step that matters

Drain the cabbage until completely dry. Any water left on the cabbage dilutes the vinegar and weakens the pickle, and it can encourage spoilage. Thorough draining keeps the brine strong and the cabbage crisp.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

More pickled cabbage recipes

Yellow 12Sweet 6Red 4Spiced 3 See all 87 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes