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Pepper Hash

A pickled pepper relish made with sweet peppers, onions, cabbage, vinegar, salt, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pepper Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the sweet peppers, onions, and cabbage finely.

  2. Sprinkle 1 cup of coarse sea salt over the chopped vegetables and let them stand overnight.

  3. Squeeze out the brine from the vegetables.

Pickle and seal

  1. Add the granulated sugar, celery seed, mustard seed, and red pepper pod to the mixture.

  2. Bring the vinegar to a boil and pour it over the vegetable mixture.

  3. Seal the mixture in 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Sweet peppers
Form the bulk of the relish and contribute crisp texture and mild sweetness.
Onions
Add savory bulk and a sharp aroma that mellows during pickling.
Cabbage
Adds crunchy texture and absorbs the vinegar and sugar flavors.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the hash its tang.
Granulated sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming their texture before pickling.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the brine. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables overnight. Removing that liquid before adding vinegar keeps the hash crisp and stops it from becoming watery and diluting the pickling liquid.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, celery, vinegar, cabbage, 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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