Skip to main content
Main

Chopped Pickles

A pickled mixture of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onion, and cabbage with spices, sugar, mustard seed, celery seed, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chopped Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes and onions.

  2. Pour boiling water over the chopped tomatoes and onions, salt lightly, and let sit overnight.

  3. The next morning, gently squeeze the mixture and place it in weak vinegar for 24 hours.

Add the spiced vinegar

  1. Bring the strong vinegar to a boil, add the spices, and pour it over the mixture while still boiling.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Cider vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that keeps the pickle tangy and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle; salting and soaking draw out moisture from them.

The step that matters

Pouring the vinegar while it is still boiling. Pouring the spiced vinegar at a full boil heats the vegetables and brings the acidic brine into contact with them at once. Heat and acid together help preserve the pickle and keep it safe to store.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, pepper, onion, cabbage, ginger, cinnamon):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Corianderfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, pepper, onion, cabbage, ginger, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes