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Pickled Peppers

Pickled peppers are preserved by salting, boiling, filling with cabbage, and submerging in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and cabbage are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pickled Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Slit the peppers carefully on the side and remove the pulp.

  2. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt inside each pepper.

Soak and fill

  1. Cover the peppers with boiling water every morning for nine days.

  2. After nine days, fill the peppers with finely chopped cabbage and a little salt, then sew the peppers closed.

  3. Place them in 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. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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

Large green garden peppers
Serve as the edible container, softening and taking on the pickling flavors during the long soak.
Cabbage
Fills the peppers, adding crisp texture and bulk inside each pepper.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickled peppers.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Cabbagethe original
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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