Skip to main content
Main

Green Parsley

A pickled green parsley preserved in vinegar, spices, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Pick the parsley and gather sprigs.

  2. Soak the parsley in a saltwater solution strong enough to float an egg for one week.

  3. Drain the parsley and soak it in a fresh saltwater solution for another week.

  4. Drain again and soak in cold water for 48 hours, changing the water three times a day.

  5. Scald the parsley until it turns green, then dry it well between cloths.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, mace, nutmeg, shallots, and horseradish; boil for 12 minutes and skim the liquid.

  2. Place the parsley in jars and pour the cooled pickle over it, then seal tightly.

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. Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Is the vegetable being preserved, so its texture and green color are the focus of the process.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the parsley and seasons it during the repeated saltwater soaks.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the parsley and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Shallots
Add mild onion-like aroma and sweetness to the pickling liquid as it boils.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that infuses into the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Drying the parsley before jarring. Any water left on the parsley dilutes the vinegar and can encourage spoilage, so the sprigs should be dried thoroughly between cloths before they go into the jars with the pickle.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, white wine, vinegar, nutmeg, shallot, horseradish):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, white wine, vinegar, nutmeg, shallot, 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes