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Salad

Heiden Salad

A pickled salad of green tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, onions, and peppers flavored with mustard seed, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Heiden Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine chopped green tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, button onions, and green peppers in a large bowl.

  2. Mix in the coarse sea salt and let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

Cook and preserve

  1. After 24 hours, add mustard seed, ground ginger, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, brown sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly until tender.

  3. Can the salad for preservation.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 salad and release liquid that mingles with the salt and sugar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables during the standing period, softening them and concentrating flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the salad its tang and helps preserve it.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk that softens as the salad cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly until tender. Simmering gently lets the vegetables soften evenly and the flavors blend without breaking the pieces apart. Boiling too hard can turn them mushy before they are fully tender.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cauliflower, onion, pepper, mustard, ginger, clove):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, onion, pepper, mustard, ginger, clove. 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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