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Red Cabbage Pickle

Pickled red cabbage in vinegar with black pepper, allspice, cloves, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Red Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cabbage

  1. Quarter the red cabbage and remove the hard stalk.

  2. Chop the cabbage and place it in an earthen bowl with a good sprinkling of coarse sea salt.

  3. Let it sit in a cool place for 24 hours.

  4. Rinse the cabbage in cold water and drain.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, combine 1 quart of strong vinegar, black pepper, allspice, cloves, and mace.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the cabbage and boil for 12 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and allow to cool slowly with the cover on.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 out water from the cabbage, softening it and seasoning it before pickling.
Strong vinegar
Supplies acidity that preserves the cabbage and sharpens its flavour.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the cabbage in the vinegar. Boiling for too long turns the cabbage soft and limp, while too short a boil leaves it under-flavoured. The cabbage should be heated just enough to take on the spiced vinegar while keeping some crispness.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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