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Wintek Pickles

A pickled cabbage and celery mixture flavored with mustard, ginger, horseradish, turmeric, salt, sugar, vinegar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

Wintek Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. Boil the vinegar with all the ingredients except the cabbage and celery.

  2. Finely chop the cabbage and celery, then add them to the boiling mixture.

  3. Cook for about 20 minutes.

Jar

  1. Put the mixture into jars and seal.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle, giving it body and a crunchy texture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Onions
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as they soften during cooking.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a savoury, vegetal flavour.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that complements the vinegar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, mustard, celery, ginger, horseradish, turmeric, sugar):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, mustard, celery, ginger, horseradish, turmeric, sugar. 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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