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Spanish Pickle

A pickled cucumber, onion, and pepper mixture seasoned with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cucumbers, onions, and green peppers, removing the seeds from the peppers.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the vegetables and ensure they are perfectly dry.

Cook the pickles

  1. Cover the vegetables with vinegar and add sugar, celery seed, mustard seed, turmeric, cinnamon, and whole cloves.

  2. Cook until the mixture can be pierced with a straw.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and stay crisp-textured once salted and drained.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness and adds sweetness to the pickling liquid.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp aroma and flavour to the pickling mixture.
Celery seed
Adds a warm, earthy aroma that characterises the pickle's flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables after salting. Salt draws water out of the vegetables overnight. If they are not thoroughly drained and dried, the excess water dilutes the vinegar and sugar brine, weakening the flavour and reducing crispness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, vinegar, sugar, celery, mustard, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, vinegar, sugar, celery, mustard, turmeric. 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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