Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Parsley

Pickled parsley preserved in cold vinegar with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the parsley in salt water, then drain and shake dry.

Pickle

  1. Place the parsley into jars and cover with cold vinegar.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of chopped horseradish for each quart of vinegar.

  3. Seal the jars tightly.

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. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Curly parsley
The main vegetable being pickled, providing the herbal flavour and the body of the jar.
Cold vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the parsley and gives the pickle its sour taste.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat, as its flavour compounds are released when the root is chopped.

The step that matters

Drain and shake the parsley dry. Leftover washing water dilutes the vinegar, lowering its acidity. Less acidity means weaker preservation and a watered-down flavour in the finished pickle.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, horseradish):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, horseradish. 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes