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Salad

Hyden Salad

A pickled cabbage salad with green tomatoes, peppers, onions, mustard, spices, sugar, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hyden Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine chopped cabbage, green tomatoes, green peppers, and onions in a large bowl.

  2. Strain the mixture and discard the juice.

Cook

  1. Add mustard, cinnamon, cloves, celery seed, sugar, salt, and vinegar to the mixture. Mix well and boil for 25 minutes.

  2. Adjust pepper to taste if desired.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 salad and holds its crisp texture during cooking.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body to the salad.
Sugar
Sweetens the salad and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the salad its tang.
Onions
Add sharp aroma and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Boil for 25 minutes after adding the vinegar and sugar. Boiling the vinegar mixture long enough lets the flavors meld and softens the vegetables slightly, while the acid preserves them; boiling too briefly leaves the vegetables raw and the flavors sharp and separate.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, tomato, pepper, mustard, cinnamon, clove, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, tomato, pepper, mustard, cinnamon, clove, celery. 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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