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Green Pickles

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Green Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a four-gallon jar, combine the vinegar, black mustard seed, ginger, long peppers, cinnamon, stick cinnamon, allspice, cloves, horseradish, mace, salt, brown sugar, sliced lemons, celery seed, and coriander seed. Beat well.

  2. Soak cucumbers in saltwater for a week or more.

  3. After soaking, cover cucumbers with grape leaves and a mixture of vinegar and water. Keep warm until they are sufficiently colored.

  4. Transfer cucumbers to a jar of weak vinegar to extract the salt.

  5. Finally, place the cucumbers in the spiced 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

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