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Cabbage Pickle

A fermented cabbage dish preserved with salt, sugar, spices, mustard, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer sliced cabbage in a stone or wooden vessel, sprinkling each layer with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let stand for 24 hours, then rinse off the salt and drain.

Pack and pickle

  1. Place cabbage into jars, adding sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, ground mustard, mustard seed, and horseradish between layers.

  2. Pour enough cold vinegar over the cabbage to cover it well.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 and absorbs the spiced brine and vinegar flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cabbage, softening it and concentrating its flavour before pickling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cold vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the cabbage.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite to the pickle.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that stands out against the sweetness.

The step that matters

Salting and rinsing the cabbage. Salt draws water out of the cabbage over 24 hours, which keeps it crisp and lets it take up the pickling liquid. Rinse off the salt and drain thoroughly, because residual salt and water can dilute the vinegar and leave the pickle overly salty or soft.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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