Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Peppeks

Pickled peppers stuffed with seasoned cabbage, boiled in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Peppeks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the tops of the peppers and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the peppers in a strong saltwater solution overnight.

  3. Chop the cabbage and season it with salt and black pepper.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the peppers with the seasoned cabbage and sew the tops back on.

  2. Boil the stuffed peppers in vinegar until tender.

Jar and pickle

  1. Place the peppers in a jar.

  2. Cover with cold vinegar, adding a few pieces of horseradish.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 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

Large green peppers
Form the edible vessel that holds the cabbage filling and softens when boiled.
Cabbage
Provides the filling, adding bulk and a crisp-tender texture after cooking.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the peppers and gives them their sharp, tangy flavor.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma that infuses the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the stuffed peppers in vinegar until tender. Boiling too briefly leaves the pepper walls firm and raw-tasting, while overcooking makes them collapse and split. Tenderness should be checked by testing the pepper wall, not by time alone.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, vinegar. 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

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes