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Celery Pickle

A pickled mixture of cabbage and celery flavored with turmeric, mace, cinnamon, ginger, celery seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Celery Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage and celery, then place them in a jar.

  2. Pour boiling salt water over the vegetables and let them stand for 2 days.

  3. Drain the mixture in a colander and transfer it to a pan.

Season and pickle

  1. Add turmeric, horseradish, mace, broken cinnamon, white ginger, and celery seed to the pan.

  2. In a separate pot, heat 1 quart of vinegar with sugar and whole black pepper until boiling.

  3. Once cooled, pour the vinegar mixture over the vegetables and fill the jar with cold 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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turmeric + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + horseradishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and stays crisp-textured as it stands in brine.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, savory vegetable flavor to the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow color and an earthy flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour boiling salt water over the vegetables and let them stand for 2 days. The salt draws water out of the cabbage and celery through osmosis, softening them and helping them stay crisp and well seasoned. Using the full brining time lets the salt penetrate evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, turmeric, horseradish, cinnamon, ginger, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, turmeric, horseradish, cinnamon, ginger, vinegar. 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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