Name: Green Pepper Mangles
Ingredients: large green peppers; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt; hard white cabbage; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon mustard seed; ½ teaspoon cloves; ½ teaspoon allspice; cold vinegar

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Green Pepper Mangles

Ingredients

Directions

Cut a slice from the tops of the green peppers and remove the seeds and white veins.
Stand the peppers upright with their tops and 1 teaspoon of salt inside in a dish.
Cover with cold water and let stand overnight.
Shave enough hard white cabbage to fill the peppers.
Season the cabbage with 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of mustard seed, ½ teaspoon of cloves, and ½ teaspoon of allspice.
Drain the peppers thoroughly and stuff them with the prepared cabbage.
Tie the tops back on and place the peppers closely in stone jars.
Cover the peppers with cold vinegar.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the cabbage

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

Horseradishfits better
Shallotfits better
Radishfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, clove, allspice, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.