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Chopped Pickles

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, and onions seasoned with salt, pepper, horseradish, mustard seed, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chopped Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, and onions finely.

  2. Salt the mixture well and let it sit overnight.

Pack and cover

  1. Drain the mixture and add pepper, horseradish, white mustard seed, and sugar.

  2. Mix well, fill a jar with the mixture, and cover it with vinegar.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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
Provide the bulk of the chopped vegetable base and a tart flavor.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and body to the chopped mixture.
Cucumbers
Contribute crispness and moisture to the pickle.
Onions
Add sharp aromatic flavor that mellows during pickling.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Salting overnight, then draining. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables by osmosis. Draining well before adding the other ingredients keeps the pickle crisp and stops excess liquid from diluting the vinegar.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cucumber, onion, pepper, horseradish, mustard, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cucumber, onion, pepper, horseradish, mustard, sugar. 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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