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Chopped Pickle

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes, onions, and peppers seasoned with salt, mustard seed, allspice, cloves, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Chopped Pickle

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and peppers separately.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables and add the coarse sea salt.

Salt and drain

  1. Let the mixture stand overnight, then drain well in the morning.

Season and combine

  1. Add the mustard seed, ground allspice, ground cloves, and grated horseradish to the drained mixture, then stir to combine thoroughly.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Make up the bulk of the relish and give it a firm, tart body.
Onions
Add sharp flavor and moisture that is drawn out during salting.
Peppers
Add crisp texture and a mild, fresh bite.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables so they can be drained and stay crisp.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavor that mellows as the mixture rests.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat.

The step that matters

Drain well after standing overnight. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables by osmosis. If the liquid is not drained thoroughly, excess moisture remains and dilutes the seasoning, leaving the pickle watery and less crisp.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, mustard, allspice, clove, 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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