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Stuffed Pepper Pickles

A pickled green pepper stuffed with cabbage and spices, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Stuffed Pepper Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Remove seeds from green peppers.

  2. Soak peppers in salt water for 10 days.

  3. Soak in clear water for 24 hours.

  4. Pack peppers in a jar.

Scald and stuff

  1. Scald with a mixture of equal parts vinegar and water, adding a small piece of alum, for 3 consecutive days.

  2. Make stuffing by combining cabbage, horseradish, ground ginger, ground mustard, mace, cloves, and cinnamon.

  3. Fill the peppers with the stuffing.

Pickle

  1. Boil strong vinegar and pour it over the stuffed peppers while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 peppers
The main vegetable being pickled, becoming tender and taking on the brine's flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the peppers during the salt soak, firming them and seasoning them.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the peppers and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the stuffing, adding crunch and body to the filling.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that mellows during pickling and carries into the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aromatic spice to the stuffing and pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking in salt water for 10 days. Salt draws water out of the peppers through osmosis, firming their flesh and limiting spoilage. Too little salt or too short a soak leaves them soft and more prone to spoiling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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