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Pickled Peppers

A pickled green pepper dish with cabbage, onions, celery seed, horseradish, and a cider vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut the peppers in half and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the peppers in strong salt water overnight.

Stuff and pack

  1. Shred the cabbage and mix it with the celery seed, onions, and horseradish.

  2. Drain the peppers and stuff them with the cabbage mixture.

  3. Tie the halves together and place them in a stone jar.

Pickle and store

  1. Heat the vinegar and sugar until boiling, then pour over the peppers.

  2. Leave the peppers uncovered until cool, then cover securely.

  3. Store in a cool place; they will be ready to serve in about three days.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green peppers
Form the main vessel that is stuffed and holds the pickling brine.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickled peppers.
Cabbage
Supplies the crisp, bulky filling that fills the peppers.
Silver skin onions
Add a mild, sharp onion flavour to the cabbage filling.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar over the peppers, then cool uncovered. The vinegar must be fully boiling so the brine is hot enough to start pickling. Letting the peppers cool uncovered before sealing avoids trapping steam, which can soften them and encourage spoilage.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cider, vinegar, sugar, cabbage, celery, horseradish. 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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