Name: To Pickle Nasturtium-Berries
Ingredients: Nasturtium berries; cold salt water; white-wine vinegar; 2-3 blades of mace; 1 nutmeg, diced; peppercorns; coarse sea salt; 2-3 shallots; horseradish

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 ↓

To Pickle Nasturtium-Berries

Ingredients

Directions

Gather nasturtium berries soon after the blooms are gone.
Soak them in cold salt water, changing the water once a day for three days.
Make a pickle with white-wine vinegar, mace, diced nutmeg, peppercorns, salt, shallots, and horseradish.
Drain the berries and place them in a jar.
Pour the pickle over the berries and seal the jar.
Store in a cool place for use.

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.

Shallot + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together376 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Nutmeg + horseradishtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together389 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,374 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the mace

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

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, vinegar, nutmeg, shallot, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.