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Pepper Pickle

A pickled pepper dish with cabbage, mustard seeds, horseradish, onions, and spices, preserved in brine and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Pepper Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Cut the peppers around the stem.

  2. Remove all seeds from the peppers.

  3. Replace the stem on each pepper.

Brine the peppers

  1. Prepare a brine that will float an egg.

  2. Boil the brine.

  3. Pour the brine over the peppers.

  4. Repeat this process every other morning for three times.

Stuff and pack

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped cabbage, white mustard seed, black mustard seed, grated horseradish, celery seed, brown sugar, chopped onions, salt, and black pepper thoroughly.

  2. Stuff the peppers with the mixture.

  3. Sew the caps on the peppers with coarse thread.

  4. Layer the stuffed peppers in a jar, sprinkling brown sugar, sliced onions, horseradish, white mustard seed, black mustard seed, celery seed, ginger, cinnamon, mace, cloves, allspice, and crushed red pepper between layers.

Finish the jar

  1. Mix ground mustard with a little water.

  2. Pour ½ teacup of the mixture over the top of the jar.

  3. Fill the jar with vinegar.

  4. Add garlic for flavor if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

Peppers
Form the whole vessel that holds the filling and gives the pickle its body.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and a crisp texture to the stuffing.
White mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during pickling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it tang.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, biting heat that stands up to long storage.

The step that matters

Brine strength. Salt in the brine draws water out of the peppers, firms their flesh and slows spoilage microbes. A brine too weak to float an egg has too little salt to do this, so the peppers may soften or spoil.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, cabbage, mustard, horseradish, celery, sugar. 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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