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Pickled Peppers

A pickled pepper recipe using cabbage, horseradish, mustard seed, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Pickled Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the stems off the peppers in a round circle and set them aside.

  2. Wash the peppers in cold water.

  3. Mix finely chopped cabbage, horseradish, mustard seed, and coarse sea salt.

Fill and pickle

  1. Fill each pepper with the mixture, replace the cut-out piece, and tie with coarse thread.

  2. Pack the peppers in stone jars and fill with sharp vinegar.

  3. Let them sit for two weeks before using.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Peppers
Hold the filling and become tender and flavourful as they pickle in the vinegar.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and body to the filling inside the peppers.
Horseradish
Provides a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during pickling.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, aromatic bite to the filling.
Sharp vinegar
Acidifies and preserves the peppers while flavouring them.

The step that matters

Let them sit for two weeks before using. Pickling needs time for the vinegar to penetrate the peppers and soften their sharpness. Using them early leaves them harsh and under-flavoured.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, horseradish, mustard, vinegar. 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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