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Hot Pickles

A pickled vegetable dish made by boiling vinegar, salt, ginger, mace, shallots, cayenne pepper, mustard seed, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Hot Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. In a large pot, combine vinegar, salt, ginger, mace, shallots, cayenne pepper, and mustard seed.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

Pickle

  1. Transfer the hot mixture to a stone jar.

  2. Clean and prepare your chosen vegetables, then add them to the jar.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + shallottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Salt
Seasons the brine and helps draw moisture out of the vegetables and shallots.
Shallots
Add mild onion flavour that mellows and sweetens during the boil.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter flavour that develops as the seeds steep in the hot brine.

The step that matters

Boiling the brine for 30 minutes. Boiling extracts flavour from the ginger, mace, shallots and spices into the vinegar and softens the shallots. Keeping the mixture hot when it goes into the jar helps it penetrate the vegetables evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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