Name: To Prepare Nasturtium Seeds for Pickles or Capers
Ingredients: nasturtium seeds; salt; boiling vinegar; spices; sugar

Why it works: Vinegar and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Prepare Nasturtium Seeds for Pickles or Capers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the seeds

Remove the stems from the nasturtium seeds.
Soak the seeds in salted water overnight.

Pickle

Pack the seeds into small bottles.
Cover the seeds with boiling vinegar.
Add spices and a little sugar if desired.

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.

Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Nasturtium seeds: Provide the main body and crisp, pickled texture of the dish.
Boiling vinegar: Acidity that preserves the seeds and gives them their sharp, tangy flavour.
Salt: Draws moisture out of the seeds during soaking, firming their texture.
Sugar: Softens the sharpness of the vinegar, adding a little sweetness.

“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.