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Celery Pickle

A pickled celery and cabbage mixture flavored with mustard seed, salt, sugar, ginger, vinegar, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Celery Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. In a porcelain-lined kettle, combine mustard seed, salt, chopped cabbage, sugar, celery, crushed ginger root, vinegar, and turmeric.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 4 to 5 hours until the cabbage and celery are tender.

Jar

  1. Transfer the pickle into jars, ensuring the vinegar covers it well.

  2. Cork the jars tightly and avoid boiling the pickle hard at any time.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White mustard seed
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and softens into a tender texture during the long cook.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savory vegetable flavor and tender body.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps keep it preserved.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and an earthy, warm flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and the mixture simmering. A hard boil breaks cabbage and celery down into mush and can scorch the mixture on the kettle base. Slow, gentle heat lets the vegetables soften evenly while the flavors blend.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, celery, ginger, vinegar, turmeric):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, celery, ginger, vinegar, turmeric. 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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