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Yellow Pickle

A fermented pickle of cabbage, cucumbers, peaches, and other vegetables, flavored with garlic, allspice, long pepper, turmeric, mustard, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Yellow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Put cabbage, cucumbers, peaches, and any other desired fruit or vegetable in salt or vinegar for 2 to 3 weeks.

Make the spice mixture

  1. Bruise garlic, allspice, long pepper, turmeric, white mustard, and sliced horseradish together.

  2. Combine the bruised mixture with 2 gallons of strong vinegar.

Steep in the sun

  1. Set the mixture in the sun and stir it every day.

  2. Leave it until the horseradish looks yellow.

  3. Wipe the pickle and return it to the vinegar.

  4. Let it stand in the sun for several days.

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. Allspice + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cucumber + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 absorbs the brine and spice flavours.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and watery body that soaks up the vinegar.
Garlic
Contributes pungent, savoury flavour that mellows during sun steeping.
White mustard
Adds sharp heat and pungency to the vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and an earthy, bitter aroma.
Strong vinegar
Acts as the preserving liquid, adding acidity that keeps the vegetables and fruit stable.

The step that matters

Leaving the mixture in the sun. Sun steeping is slow, and the vinegar must stay acidic and the mixture covered and clean. Wiping the pickle before returning it helps limit surface spoilage, so the flavours develop safely.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cucumber, vinegar, garlic, allspice, pepper, turmeric):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cucumber, vinegar, garlic, allspice, pepper, turmeric. 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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