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Spanish Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, green peppers, onions, and green tomatoes seasoned with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

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 ↓

Spanish Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cucumbers, green peppers, onions, and green tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle with 1 pint of coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Cook

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the vegetables with horseradish, mace, white pepper, turmeric, mustard-seed, cloves, celery-seed, dry mustard, and brown sugar.

  2. Cover with vinegar and boil for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the bulk of the pickle and a crisp, fresh bite when kept firm.
Onions
Add sharp flavor and body that softens and sweetens during the long boil.
Green tomatoes
Add bulk and tartness that holds its shape through the pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables overnight, firming them and concentrating flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth that balances the vinegar's acidity.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt. Salted vegetables release a lot of liquid. Draining them well keeps the final pickle from becoming watery and diluting the vinegar and spice brine.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, onion, tomato, horseradish, mace, turmeric):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, onion, tomato, horseradish, mace, turmeric. 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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