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Spanish Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, and green peppers seasoned with salt, turmeric, mustard, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Turmeric and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, onions, and green peppers in a bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Place mixture in a bag and drain overnight.

Pickle

  1. Heat vinegar with turmeric, mustard, and ginger.

  2. Pour the heated vinegar mixture over the drained vegetables.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 pickle and keep a crisp bite after salting and draining.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables so they drain and firm up before pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma that mellow as the pickle sits.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables. Salt pulls water out of the vegetables through osmosis. If they are not drained well, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and leaves the pickle soft and watery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Radishfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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