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Spanish Pickle

A pickled cucumber, pepper, onion, and tomato mixture seasoned with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cucumbers, green peppers, onions, and green tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle the vegetables with 1 pint of coarse sea salt and let them sit overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Cook

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the vegetables with sliced horseradish, mace, white pepper, turmeric, white mustard seed, cloves, celery seed, dry mustard, and brown sugar.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and boil for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main bulk and crisp texture of the pickle.
Onions
Add savory bulk and a mild sharpness that mellows during cooking.
Green tomatoes
Add firm body and tartness that hold their shape in the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that deepens as the pickle cooks.

The step that matters

Salting overnight. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis. Draining them well removes that liquid so the pickle stays crisp and does not dilute the vinegar mixture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, onion, tomato, horseradish, mace, turmeric):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, onion, tomato, horseradish, mace, turmeric. 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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