Name: Pickled Stuffed Bell Peppers, Sharon Style
Ingredients: 2 heads of cabbage, tender parts only; ½ cup white mustard seed; ⅛ cup celery seed; 4 tablespoons grated horseradish; coarse sea salt, to taste; small onions or pickles, for stuffing; cold boiled vinegar, to cover

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 ↓

Pickled Stuffed Bell Peppers, Sharon Style

Ingredients

2 heads of cabbage, tender parts only
½ cup white mustard seed
⅛ cup celery seed
4 tablespoons grated horseradish
coarse sea salt, to taste
small onions or pickles, for stuffing
cold boiled vinegar, to cover

Directions

Cut the tender parts of the cabbage into fine shreds.
Parboil the cabbage for 5 minutes and drain in a colander.
In an earthen bowl, combine the cabbage, mustard seed, celery seed, horseradish, and salt. Mix well.
Stuff the peppers with the cabbage mixture and place a small onion or pickle in the center of each.
Tie the tops of the peppers with string and arrange them in jars.
Pour cold boiled vinegar over the peppers to cover them.
Seal the jars tightly.

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.

Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

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

Broccolifits better
Radishfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, mustard, celery, horseradish, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.