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Pickled Red Cabbage

A pickled dish made by brining sliced red cabbage with vinegar, salt, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Pickled Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place sliced red cabbage in a stone jar and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. If using, sprinkle powdered cochineal among the cabbage before pouring in the vinegar.

  3. Red beet root can also be used for color if desired.

Pickle

  1. Heat vinegar nearly to boiling and pour it over the cabbage to cover the leaves.

  2. Optionally, add long pepper, allspice, and ginger to the vinegar for flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together545 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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 the red pigment that the vinegar brings out.
Vinegar
Acidity that pickles the cabbage and helps keep its red color bright.
Powdered cochineal
Adds a deep red color to the pickle.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot vinegar over the cabbage. Vinegar must fully cover the cabbage so no leaves are exposed to air, which can spoil the pickle. Heating it nearly to boiling helps the vinegar penetrate the leaves and speeds the early pickling process.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Dillfits about as well

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