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Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, green pepper, and cabbage in brine, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the cucumbers and green pepper.

  2. Chop the cabbage finely.

  3. Mix the cucumbers, green pepper, and cabbage in a large bowl.

  4. Add the strong brine and let it sit for a while.

  5. Drain the mixture and pack it into jars.

Season and seal

  1. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, salt, black pepper, red pepper, and horseradish.

  2. Cover the pickles with vinegar and seal the jars tightly.

  3. Store in a cool, dry place.

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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, firm body of the pickle that holds up in the brine.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a crunchy texture that absorbs the brine flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp taste.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Draining before packing. Draining the brined vegetables removes excess liquid, so the jars are packed firmly and the vinegar added later is not diluted. Too much water left in the mixture can make the pickles soft and weaken their keeping quality.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cabbage, sugar, horseradish, 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

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