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Red Cabbage Pickles

Pickled red cabbage seasoned with coarse sea salt, whole cloves, mustard seed, peppercorns, allspice, cinnamon stick, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Red Cabbage Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and rest

  1. Slice the red cabbage and layer it in a large enameled pan, sprinkling each layer lightly with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the cabbage stand for 24 hours to draw out moisture.

  3. Drain off the liquid.

Cook and store

  1. Add whole spices and brown sugar to taste.

  2. Cover the cabbage with vinegar.

  3. Cook until tender.

  4. Store in a stone crock.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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
Forms the bulk of the pickle and becomes tender and colorful as it cooks in vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cabbage, softening it and concentrating its flavor before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavor and preserves it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Draining after salting. Salt draws out liquid over 24 hours, and the cabbage must be drained well so the vinegar is not diluted. Excess water weakens the acidity and makes the pickle soft and less flavorful.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, mustard, allspice, cinnamon, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, mustard, allspice, cinnamon, sugar, 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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