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Pepper Relish

A pickled relish made from green peppers, onions, sugar, salt, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pepper Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wipe the peppers and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Remove the seeds, pith, and stem ends.

  3. Peel the onions.

  4. Put the peppers and onions through a food chopper.

  5. Cover with boiling water and let stand for 5 minutes, then drain.

Cook and store

  1. Add sugar, salt, and vinegar, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Store in sterilized glass jars.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Provide the bulk and fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor of the relish.
Onions
Add pungency and sweetness that mellow during simmering.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar's acidity and helps preserve the relish.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens flavor and helps preserve the relish.

The step that matters

Draining after the boiling-water soak. Draining off the soaking water removes excess liquid and some of the vegetables' sharpness. Leaving too much water in the chopped vegetables would dilute the vinegar and sugar mixture, making the relish thinner and less well preserved.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, 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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