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Hodge Podge

A mixed vegetable salad of green tomatoes, cabbage, celery, and garden peppers seasoned with mustard seed, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Hodge Podge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and cabbage finely.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let drain overnight.

  3. Chop the celery and garden peppers finely.

Combine and cover

  1. Add the chopped celery and peppers to the tomatoes and cabbage.

  2. Mix in mustard seed and grated horseradish to taste.

  3. Cover the mixture with vinegar.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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 tomatoes
Provide the main bulk and a tart, fresh flavor base for the salad.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and body that holds up after salting and marinating.
Celery
Contributes crunch and a fresh, herbal savoriness to the mixture.
Garden peppers
Add mild sharpness and extra vegetable texture throughout the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the overall flavor.

The step that matters

Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let drain overnight. Salt draws water out of the chopped tomatoes and cabbage by osmosis. Draining removes that liquid so the salad stays crisp rather than watery once vinegar is added.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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