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Mixed Pickles

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and cucumber are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,405 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and drain

  1. Chop the cabbage, green tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and green peppers very fine, each separately.

  2. Mix all the chopped vegetables together and layer them in a bowl, sprinkling with coarse sea salt.

  3. Let the mixture sit overnight.

  4. In the morning, squeeze the mixture dry with your hands and cover it with cold vinegar.

  5. Let it sit for 24 hours, then squeeze it dry again.

  6. Transfer the mixture to a jar.

Make the spiced vinegar and finish

  1. In a kettle, combine fresh vinegar (enough to cover the pickles), sugar, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and mace.

  2. Grind the allspice and tie it in a thin cloth before adding it to the kettle.

  3. Boil the mixture for a few minutes, then pour it over the pickles.

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. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, leaving them crisp and firm after draining.
Cabbage
Provides bulk and a crisp texture that holds up through the long soak.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Fresh vinegar
Acidifies the pickles, preserving them and giving the sharp tang.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Squeezing the salted vegetables dry. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis. If they are not squeezed thoroughly, excess moisture dilutes the vinegar and leaves the pickles soft and watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, tomato, cucumber, pepper, vinegar, sugar, clove):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, tomato, cucumber, pepper, vinegar, sugar, clove. 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

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