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Pickled Parsley

Pickled parsley is preserved in cold vinegar with horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select perfect curly heads of parsley.

  2. Wash thoroughly in salt water. Drain and shake until dry.

Pickle

  1. Put into jars of cold vinegar. Add 2 tablespoons of chopped horseradish for each quart.

  2. Cover and store for later 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.

  1. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 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

Curly parsley
Is the main ingredient being pickled, giving the dish its flavor and texture.
Cold vinegar
Acidifies the parsley, preserving it and giving it a sharp, tangy taste.
Chopped horseradish
Adds pungent heat and aroma that infuse into the vinegar and parsley.

The step that matters

Drain and shake until dry. Excess water dilutes the vinegar and weakens its preserving effect, so the parsley should be as dry as possible before jarring.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, horseradish. 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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