Skip to main content
Drink

Sweet Mixed Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of tomatoes, cabbage, and bell peppers sweetened with brown sugar and preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop all vegetables finely and mix well.

  2. Pack the mixture into jars and add the salt.

  3. Let it stand for 24 hours, then press out all moisture.

Cook and seal

  1. Cover with vinegar and boil for 20 minutes.

  2. Seal in glass jars.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Green tomatoes
Add bulk and body to the pickle.
Ripe tomatoes
Add juice and sweetness to the mixture.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture that holds up through cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Bell peppers
Add sweet flavour, colour and some crunch.
Cider vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Press out all moisture after standing. Salt draws water out of the vegetables overnight. Pressing out that liquid keeps the pickle crisp and stops it from diluting the vinegar, so it keeps its flavour and texture.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, sugar, pepper, cider, vinegar, celery, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, sugar, pepper, cider, vinegar, celery, mustard. 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

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesApple CiderApple Cider11 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes