Name: Good Walnut Pickle
Ingredients: 3 heads of garlic, chopped; ¼ ounce cochineal; 2 heads of shallots, chopped; 1 gallon vinegar

Why it works: Garlic and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Good Walnut Pickle

Ingredients

3 heads of garlic, chopped
¼ ounce cochineal
2 heads of shallots, chopped
1 gallon vinegar

Directions

Combine garlic, cochineal, shallots, and vinegar in a large container.
Let it stand for 14 days, stirring well twice or thrice daily.
Strain through a jelly bag until clear.
Bottle the mixture and seal with a bladder over the cork.

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.

Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,000 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,115 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,374 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).