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Salad

Pepper Sauce

A pickled sauce made from chopped cabbage, green and red peppers, horseradish, salt, celery seed, and cold vinegar.

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 ↓

Pepper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, green peppers, red peppers, and horseradish finely.

  2. Combine all chopped ingredients with coarse sea salt and celery seed.

Pickle and store

  1. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar.

  2. Store in a cool place; it will keep all winter.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the relish and gives it a crisp, crunchy texture.
Green peppers
Add fresh, grassy flavour and crisp body to the relish.
Red peppers
Add sweeter flavour and colour to the relish.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables, helping them soften and preserving the mixture.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the relish its bite.
Cold vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, adding tang and helping preserve it.

The step that matters

Covering the mixture with cold vinegar. The vinegar must fully cover the chopped vegetables so none are exposed to air. Its acidity inhibits spoilage microbes, so the relish keeps well in storage.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, 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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