Skip to main content
Drink

Spanish Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and green pepper seasoned with mustard seed, spices, sugar, molasses, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Mustard and celery 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 ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop cucumbers, green tomatoes, cabbages, onions, and green pepper finely.

Make the pickle

  1. In a kettle, mix all chopped ingredients with mustard seed, black pepper, ketchup, celery seed, mace, allspice, brown sugar, molasses, salt, and vinegar.

  2. Let the mixture simmer.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulky body of the pickle.
Cabbages
Add crunch and bulk that hold up well in the vinegar brine.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during simmering.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar with sweetness and adds depth through molasses-like richness.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the mixture. Simmering softens the chopped vegetables and blends the vinegar, sugar and spices. Stopping too early leaves the vegetables raw and the flavours sharp and disconnected.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, cabbage, pepper, mustard, ketchup, celery):

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

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

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesCucumber PicklesCucumber Pickles25 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes