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Salad

Chopped Pickles

A pickled relish of green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, peppers, spices, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chopped Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle salt over the chopped green tomatoes and let stand for 2 hours.

  2. Drain the tomatoes.

Cook

  1. Add the chopped cabbage, onions, peppers, ginger, mace, cloves, cinnamon, brown sugar, celery seed, and turmeric.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and mix well.

  3. Cover closely and boil for 1 hour.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and release liquid once salted and drained.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and body that holds up during the long boil.
Onions
Add savory depth and bulk to the mixture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cabbage, onion, pepper, ginger, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cabbage, onion, pepper, ginger, clove, cinnamon. 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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