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Pepper Hash

A preserved vegetable mixture of tomatoes, cabbage, celery, and peppers seasoned with mustard seed, salt, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, sugar, and wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Pepper Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, cabbage, celery, and green peppers finely.

  2. Drain the chopped vegetables overnight.

Season and store

  1. Add mustard seed, coarse sea salt, whole cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and sugar to the drained vegetables, and mix everything together.

  2. Cover with best wine vinegar.

  3. Store without sealing.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spices as they sit.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk that holds up through the long soak.
Celery
Contributes crunch and a fresh, vegetal flavor to the mixture.
Green peppers
Add sharp, fresh pepper flavor and more crisp texture to the hash.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, slightly bitter flavor that deepens during storage.

The step that matters

Drain the chopped vegetables overnight. Salting and draining pulls water out of the vegetables. If they stay wet, the hash turns watery and dilutes the vinegar, so the drain needs to be thorough before seasoning.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, pepper, mustard, clove, allspice, cinnamon):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, pepper, mustard, clove, allspice, cinnamon. 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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