Name: Pepper Hash
Ingredients: 1 cup green peppers, minced; 1 cup ripe peppers, minced; 1 cup cabbage, minced; 1 cup cucumbers, minced; 2 teaspoons horseradish; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1½ cups strong vinegar

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 ↓

Pepper Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Mince green and ripe peppers, cabbage, and cucumbers separately.
Mix them well together.
Season with horseradish and coarse sea salt.
Cover with strong vinegar.

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.

Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together640 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together722 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers: Add sweetness, colour and bulk to the chopped mixture.
Ripe peppers: Add sweetness and a deeper flavour to the chopped mixture.
Cabbage: Adds crisp texture and bulk to the mixture.
Cucumbers: Add crunch and fresh moisture to the mixture.
Horseradish: Adds sharp heat that cuts through the sweet vegetables.
Strong vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and keeps the vegetables tangy.

Swap the cucumber

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

Mustardfits better
Radishfits better
Cauliflowerfits about as well
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, 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.