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Mixed Pickle

A pickled mixture of string beans, green peppers, corn, parsley, onions, pimentos, celery seed, mustard seed, paprika, vinegar, corn syrup, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mixed Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the string beans, green peppers, corn, and parsley for about two hours.

Cook

  1. Dice the green peppers and cook them with the other salted vegetables until tender.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients and cook the mixture until it is clear.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 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

String beans
Provide the main vegetable bulk and a crisp-tender texture in the pickle.
Corn
Adds sweetness and bulk to the mixed vegetables.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Corn syrup
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Contributes a pungent, sharp flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture is clear. Cooking the vegetables in the vinegar and sugar mixture until clear shows the vegetables have softened and absorbed the brine. Stopping too early leaves them raw and less well preserved, while overcooking makes them mushy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper, corn, parsley, celery, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, corn, parsley, celery, mustard, 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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