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Cabbage Catsup

A pickled cabbage dish seasoned with vinegar, mustard, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, mace, horseradish, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, onions, and green pepper together.

Make the catsup

  1. Boil the vinegar with mustard, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, mace, horseradish, and brown sugar.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the chopped vegetables.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 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

Winter cabbage
Forms the bulk of the catsup and gives it a firm, chunky texture.
Onions
Add savory flavor and aroma that build the base of the catsup.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the catsup and sharpens its flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that balances the sharp vinegar.
Green pepper
Contributes a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, vinegar, mustard, ginger, allspice, cinnamon. 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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