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Salad

Chopped Pickles

A pickled relish of tomatoes, horseradish, celery, onions, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chopped Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. Combine tomatoes, horseradish, salt, mustard seed, black pepper, red pepper, celery, and onions in a large bowl.

  2. Add mace, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, and cider vinegar to the mixture and mix thoroughly.

  3. Let it sit for a while to blend the flavors.

Store

  1. Transfer to a jar and store in the refrigerator.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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

Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the mixture and gives it a sharp, tangy bite.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity and the heat of the peppers and horseradish.
White mustard seed
Contributes pungent flavor and texture to the chopped mixture.
Horseradish
Supplies sharp, pungent heat that gives the relish its bite.
Onions
Add bulk, moisture and savory sweetness to the chopped mixture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, horseradish, mustard, pepper, celery, onion, clove. 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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