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Spanish Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, and green pepper pods in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers, onions, and green peppers with salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Place the mixture in a bag and drain overnight.

Make the brine and combine

  1. In a large container, combine vinegar, turmeric, white ginger, ground mustard, horseradish, celery seed, salad oil, and brown sugar, mixing well until sugar is dissolved.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickle.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and rounds out the brine.
Salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and reducing their moisture.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers, onions, and peppers. Draining that liquid thoroughly keeps the pickles crisp and stops the brine from being diluted, so the finished jars stay firm rather than watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, cider, vinegar, turmeric, ginger, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cider, vinegar, turmeric, ginger, mustard. 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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