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Pepper Sauce, Nice with Fried Oysters

A pickled pepper sauce made with cabbage, green peppers, onions, salt, celery seed, mustard seed, and vinegar.

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

Pepper Sauce, Nice with Fried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, green peppers, and onions if using.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand for 2 hours.

  3. Drain the mixture.

Pickle and rest

  1. Add celery seed and mustard seed.

  2. Cover with cold vinegar and let sit for a few hours before using.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Cabbage
Provides the bulk and crisp texture of the relish.
Green peppers
Adds fresh, grassy flavor and crunch to the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, helping them soften and stay crisp in the vinegar.
Cold vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the sauce its sharp tang.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent bite as the seeds soften in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Draining after the salt rest. Salt pulls moisture from the cabbage and peppers. Draining off that liquid before adding vinegar keeps the sauce crisp and stops it from tasting watery and diluted.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, celery, mustard, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, celery, mustard, 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.

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