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Pickle Hodgen

A pickled green tomato relish with onions, peppers, horseradish, mustard, cloves, 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 ↓

Pickle Hodgen

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and sprinkle them with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let them stand overnight, then drain off the water.

Combine and pack

  1. Add the chopped onions, chopped peppers, grated horseradish, mustard seed, ground cloves, black pepper, and dry mustard, then mix well.

  2. Pack the mixture into a jar, filling it three-fourths full.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and give it its firm, tart body.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the tomatoes, firming them and concentrating flavor before pickling.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma that balance the sharp vinegar.
Horseradish
Contributes pungent heat that mellows as the pickle sits.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and providing its sharp tang.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, slightly bitter pungency and crunch to the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain off the water after salting overnight. Salt pulls moisture out of the tomatoes. If the liquid is not drained well, the pickle stays watery and dilutes the vinegar, weakening both texture and preservation.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, horseradish, mustard, clove, 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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