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Spanish Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, beans, corn, cabbage, peppers, onions, and tomatoes with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, string beans, corn, cabbage, sweet peppers, and onions in a large bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand for 1 hour.

  3. Scald and drain the mixture.

Cook the pickles

  1. Mix in green tomatoes, horseradish, mustard seed, turmeric, ground cloves, celery seed, sugar, and cinnamon.

  2. Cover with vinegar and boil until tender.

  3. Adjust sweetness and saltiness as needed.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulky body of the pickle mixture.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a firm texture that holds up during boiling.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor that deepens during cooking.
Sweet peppers
Add sweetness, colour and a tender bite to the mix.

The step that matters

Scalding and draining after the salt rest. Salt draws water out of the vegetables. Draining off that liquid after scalding keeps the pickle from becoming watery and diluted once the vinegar is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, beans, corn, cabbage, pepper, tomato, horseradish):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, beans, corn, cabbage, pepper, tomato, 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.

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