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Favorite Pickles

Pickled beets made with sugar, salt, pepper, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and horseradish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,646 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Favorite Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop boiled beets finely.

Make the pickle

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

  2. Add the chopped beets to the mixture.

  3. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar.

Store

  1. Store in an airtight container.

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. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + horseradishtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and horseradish.
Cold vinegar
Acidity that preserves the beets and gives the pickle its tang.
Boiled beets
Provides the main bulk, earthy flavor, and color.
Grated horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the pickle its bite.

The step that matters

Covering the mixture with cold vinegar. Enough vinegar must fully cover the beets so the acid reaches all of them; exposed pieces can spoil and lose flavor and color.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, 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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