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Pepper Hash III

A preserved mixture of sweet red peppers, onions, vinegar, water, brown sugar, mustard seed, salt, and horseradish boiled for 1 hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Pepper Hash III

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the sweet red peppers and onions.

Cook

  1. Combine the chopped peppers, onions, vinegar, water, brown sugar, mustard seed, and salt in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

  3. Add the horseradish and cook for an additional 10 minutes.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet red peppers
Provide the main bulk and mild sweetness of the hash.
Onions
Add savory flavor and body that softens during the long simmer.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the mixture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows somewhat during cooking.

The step that matters

Adding the horseradish. Horseradish loses its sharp pungency with prolonged heat, so it is added near the end and cooked only briefly to keep its bite.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard, 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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