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Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage prepared with salt, vinegar, mustard seed, allspice, cinnamon bark, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cabbage

  1. Quarter or half quarter the cabbage and cover it with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain and dry the cabbage.

Make the pickle

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine vinegar, mustard seed, allspice, cinnamon bark, and a little sugar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the cabbage and cook for 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle; salting draws out water so it stays firm and crisp.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the cabbage through osmosis, firming its texture before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle's flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a little sweetness.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the cabbage and cook for 30 minutes. Cooking the cabbage for the full 30 minutes softens it and lets the spiced vinegar penetrate. Too short a cook leaves it crunchy and under-flavoured, while overcooking turns it limp.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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