Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Pickled Cabbage
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Sprinkle chopped cabbage with coarse sea salt and let it stand overnight.
Press the cabbage dry in a colander.
Pickle
Mix in the green pepper, mustard seed, horseradish, and sugar.
Add vinegar to cover the mixture.
Optionally, mix with white cabbage if preferred.
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.
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Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,832 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together481 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,645 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,081 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Purple cabbage
- Forms the bulk of the dish and holds its crunch as it pickles.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws water out of the cabbage so it becomes drier and crisper.
- Sugar
- Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
- Vinegar
- Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and giving the pickled tang.
- Horseradish
- Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows during pickling.
The step that matters
Press the cabbage dry in a colander. Salting draws out a lot of liquid. If the cabbage stays wet, the added vinegar is diluted, the pickle turns watery, and it stays less crisp.
Swap the cabbage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mustard, horseradish, sugar, vinegar):
- Radishfits better
- Beetrootfits better
- Shallotfits about as well
- Cabbagethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, horseradish, 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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