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Higdon Pickle

A pickled green tomato and cabbage relish with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Radish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 297 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Higdon Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the green tomatoes, salt them, and squeeze them dry.

  2. Boil the sugar and vinegar together.

  3. Slice the onions.

Make and store the pickle

  1. In a kettle, combine the boiling vinegar, onions, and all other ingredients until well heated.

  2. Transfer to a tightly covered stone jar.

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.

  1. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cabbage + radishtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sour base that preserves the pickle and gives it its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and soak up the flavored vinegar as they sit.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory body that softens as the pickle matures.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture that holds up through the long soak in vinegar.
Yellow mustard-seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during storage.

The step that matters

Squeeze the salted green tomatoes dry. Salting draws water out of the tomatoes; if they are not squeezed dry, the extra moisture dilutes the vinegar and can make the pickle watery and less well preserved.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cabbage, horse, radish, mustard, pepper. 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.

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