Name: Pepper Sauce
Ingredients: 12 green peppers, chopped fine; 9 cucumbers, chopped fine; 3 heads of cabbage, chopped fine; 6 onions, chopped fine; 12 tomatoes, chopped fine; whole white mustard seed; whole brown mustard seed; vinegar to cover

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pepper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the green peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, onions, and tomatoes finely.
Combine all the chopped vegetables in a large bowl.
Add whole white and brown mustard seeds.
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.

Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together722 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 tomato

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

Horseradishfits better
Lettucefits better
Broccolifits better
Tomatothe original

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