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Red Cabbage

A pickled red cabbage prepared with spices, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Red Cabbage

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 ↓

Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Choose a fine, firm red 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 and let it sit in the colander overnight.

  5. Shake the colander to remove excess brine.

Make the pickle and jar

  1. In a pot, combine black pepper, allspice, ginger, horseradish, and common salt with vinegar to make a hot pickle.

  2. Pour the hot pickle over the cabbage in jars.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and provides the colour and crisp texture.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cabbage so it softens slightly and takes up the pickle.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows as the cabbage pickles.

The step that matters

Salting the cabbage overnight. Salt draws water out of the cabbage through osmosis, making it less watery and better able to absorb the vinegar pickle. Too little salt or too short a rest leaves the cabbage crunchy and watery, and it can dilute the finished pickle.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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

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