Name: Pickled Peppers
Ingredients: large green sweet peppers; brine (enough to float an egg); chopped cabbage; chopped onions; mustard seed; spices; cold spiced vinegar

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pickled Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Make a small incision in the side of each pepper and remove all the seeds carefully.
Soak the peppers in brine for two days, changing the water twice.
Stuff the peppers with chopped cabbage and onions, seasoned with mustard seed and spices.
Sew up the incision, place the peppers in a jar, and cover with cold spiced vinegar.
Optionally, cut off the top of the red pepper, tie it back on, and remove it when ready to use.

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.

Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the onion

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

Horseradishfits better
Broccolifits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

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