Name: Pickles
Ingredients: good sharp vinegar; small lump of alum; handful of sugar (per gallon of vinegar); cloves; cinnamon; horseradish; red or green peppers; mustard seed

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil the pickles in boiling water, then let them cool completely.
In a porcelain kettle, scald the vinegar and dissolve the alum in it.
Pour the scalding hot vinegar over the cooled pickles.
For added flavor, include spices like cloves, cinnamon, horseradish, and peppers in bags.
Store the pickles in a dry, cool place in stone or glass jars, keeping them covered with vinegar.
If white specks appear, drain and scald the vinegar, adding a handful of sugar for each gallon.
Replace old vinegar with new if it loses strength, pouring it over the pickles while hot.

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.

Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cinnamon + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together515 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,245 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the horseradish

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

Horseradishthe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Shallotfits less well
Radishfits less well

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