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Old Virginia Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of tomatoes, cabbage, onions, peppers, celery, and spices in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Old Virginia Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the ripe and green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, red peppers, green peppers, and celery.

  2. Salt the mixture well and let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the mixture thoroughly.

Cook and season

  1. Cover with best cider vinegar and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Add grated horseradish, white mustard seed, brown mustard seed, powdered cloves, allspice, and ground mustard.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 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

Ripe tomatoes
Break down into the pickle's body and add moisture and sweetness.
Green tomatoes
Add firmer texture and tartness that holds up during long cooking.
Cabbage
Adds crisp bulk that softens gently during the boil.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and sweetness as they cook down.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Drain the salted mixture thoroughly. Salting draws out a large amount of water. If the vegetables are not well drained, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar, weakening the acidity and producing a soggy, watery pickle.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, pepper, celery, cider, vinegar, horseradish):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, pepper, celery, cider, vinegar, horseradish. 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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