Name: Pepper Hash
Ingredients: equal proportions of green peppers; equal proportions of ripe peppers; equal proportions of cabbages; equal proportions of cucumbers; horseradish to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; strong vinegar to cover

Why it works: Cucumber and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 640 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pepper Hash

Ingredients

equal proportions of green peppers
equal proportions of ripe peppers
equal proportions of cabbages
equal proportions of cucumbers
horseradish to taste
coarse sea salt to taste
strong vinegar to cover

Directions

Prepare

Mince green and ripe peppers, cabbages, and cucumbers separately.
Mix all minced vegetables together well.

Season and cover

Season with horseradish and coarse sea salt.
Cover the mixture with strong 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.

Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together640 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together722 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers: Add crisp texture and fresh, mild bitterness to the mixture.
Ripe peppers: Add sweetness and color, balancing the sharper green peppers.
Cabbages: Provide crunchy bulk that holds its texture in the brine.
Cucumbers: Contribute moisture and cool, crisp crunch to the hash.

Swap the cucumber

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

Mustardfits better
Radishfits better
Cauliflowerfits about as well
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, horseradish, vinegar. 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.