Skip to main content
Salad

Pepper Haste

A pickled relish of cabbage, peppers, onions, mustard, celery, salt, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Pepper Haste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage, onions, and peppers finely.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well.

Macerate and dissolve

  1. Cover the mixture with white wine vinegar.

  2. Let it sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, set the mixture on low heat until the sugar is melted; do not boil.

Store

  1. Seal well and store in a cool place.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

White mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the sweetness and vinegar.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the vinegar.
White wine vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the relish its tang.
Cabbage
Provides bulk and a crisp texture that holds up in the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture until the sugar melts without boiling. Gentle heat dissolves the sugar and blends the flavors while keeping the vegetables crisp. Boiling would soften them further and can make the vinegar taste harsh and evaporate its aroma.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, mustard, pepper, celery, sugar, white wine, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, mustard, pepper, celery, sugar, white wine, 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.

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes