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Spanish Pickle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

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 ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers, onions, and green peppers with coarse sea salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Place the mixture in a bag and drain overnight.

Make the brine

  1. In a large container, combine cider vinegar, turmeric, white ginger, ground mustard, horseradish, celery seed, salad oil, and brown sugar. Mix well until the sugar is dissolved.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickle.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Onions
Add savory flavor and aroma to the pickle.
Green peppers
Add crunch and a fresh, vegetal bite.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavor and sharpness to the brine.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers, onions, and peppers through osmosis. Draining off that liquid before adding the brine keeps the pickle crisp and stops it from becoming watery and diluted.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, cider, vinegar, turmeric, ginger, mustard):

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cider, vinegar, turmeric, ginger, 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.

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