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Quick Pickles

A quick pickled cabbage dish seasoned with salt, pepper, celery seed, onion, and strong vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Quick Pickles

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice or chop the cabbage.

  2. Sprinkle salt through it.

  3. Let it sit overnight.

  4. Chop the onion.

  5. Mix it with the cabbage.

  6. Drain through a colander.

Season and pickle

  1. Season with pepper and celery seed.

  2. Cover with strong vinegar.

  3. The pickles will be ready to use on the third day.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky body of the pickles.
Salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, softening it and concentrating flavor.
Strong vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickles their sharp taste.
Onion
Adds sharpness and aroma that mellows during pickling.

The step that matters

Drain through a colander. Salting draws out a lot of liquid overnight. Draining well removes that excess water so the pickles stay crisp and the vinegar flavour is not diluted.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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