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Hotch Potch

A pickled vegetable mixture of green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, and onions seasoned with salt, pepper, horseradish, mustard seed, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers, and onions very finely.

  2. Salt the mixture well and let it stand overnight.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Season and pack

  1. Add pepper, horseradish, white mustard seed, and sugar; mix well and lightly.

  2. Fill your jar and cover with good vinegar.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickled vegetables and a tart, fresh flavour.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and body that holds up through the pickling.
Cucumbers
Contribute crisp texture and moisture to the mixture.
Onions
Add pungent, savoury flavour that mellows during pickling.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and the tartness of the vegetables.
Vinegar
Acidifies and preserves the vegetables while adding sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Salting overnight. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables through osmosis, so they become crisper and less watery. Without enough salt and time, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and the pickle can turn soft.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cucumber, onion, pepper, horseradish, mustard, sugar):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cucumber, onion, pepper, horseradish, mustard, sugar. 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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