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Rough and Ready Pickle

A fermented pickle made from cucumbers, green tomatoes, bull-nose peppers, silver-skin onions, spices, vinegar, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Rough and Ready Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the cucumbers, green tomatoes, bull-nose peppers, and silver-skin onions.

  2. Salt them separately and let them stand overnight.

  3. The next morning, press them dry and mix together, chopping the onions and peppers finely.

Season and cook

  1. Add black pepper, allspice, white mustard seed, celery seed, horseradish, and cloves.

  2. Cover the mixture with vinegar and bring it to a boil.

  3. For every gallon of the mixture, add ½ pound of brown sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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
Make up the bulk of the pickle and provide crisp, watery texture once salted and pressed.
Green tomatoes
Add firm body and a tart, fresh flavor to the mixed pickle.
White mustard seed
Contributes sharp pungency that mellows during pickling in the vinegar.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sour bite.

The step that matters

Salting and pressing the vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis. Pressing them dry afterward removes that liquid so the pickle stays crisp and does not dilute the vinegar.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, pepper, allspice, mustard, celery, horse. 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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