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Spanish Pickles

A pickled cucumber and green pepper dish seasoned with vinegar, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Spanish Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers and green peppers with coarse sea salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Place the cucumbers and peppers in a bag and drain overnight.

Make the brine and pickle

  1. In a large pot, combine cider vinegar, turmeric, white ginger, ground mustard, horseradish, celery seed, salad oil, and brown sugar.

  2. Heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves, then let it cool.

  3. Pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the drained cucumbers and peppers.

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. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  4. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickles and give them their crisp, crunchy texture.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and depth of flavour.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavour and a sharp, sinus-clearing bite to the brine.
Salad oil
Adds fat that softens the brine's sharp edge and carries flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the cucumbers and peppers fully before adding the brine. Salted vegetables hold a lot of water. If they are not well drained, that water dilutes the vinegar brine, weakening its acidity and flavour and leaving the pickles soft and watery.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, cider, vinegar, turmeric, mustard, horseradish):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cider, vinegar, turmeric, mustard, horseradish. 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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