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Bellow Cabbage Pickle

A pickled cabbage seasoned with mustard, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, celery seed, pepper, turmeric, and optional red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Bellow Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cabbage

  1. Make a strong brine by dissolving the salt in water and pour it over the shredded cabbage while hot.

  2. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Remove the cabbage from the brine and place it in a porcelain kettle.

Cook and pack

  1. Pour cold vinegar over the cabbage and bring it to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool until you can handle it.

  3. In a stone jar, layer the cabbage with the spices: black mustard seed, white mustard seed, ground allspice, whole cloves, cinnamon, celery seed, black pepper, and turmeric.

  4. Sweeten the vinegar to taste, boil it with the red pepper pod, and pour it over the cabbage while hot to cover completely.

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. Allspice + clovetop 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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 softens it and lets it take up the brine and vinegar.
Salt
Draws water out of the cabbage and seasons it during the brine stage.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.
Black mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that mellows as the pickle stands.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the spiced vinegar.
Whole cloves
Adds strong aromatic warmth to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Pour the hot sweetened vinegar over the cabbage to cover completely. The cabbage must stay fully submerged in acidic liquid. Any exposed pieces can spoil or mould, and hot liquid helps the spices release flavour into the cabbage.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, allspice, clove, cinnamon, celery, pepper. 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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