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Pepper Relish

A pickled relish made from yellow, red, and green peppers, onions, cabbage, salt, vinegar, sugar, celery seed, and white mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard 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 Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Run the peppers, onions, and cabbage through a grinder.

  2. Pour 1 cup of coarse sea salt over the mixture and let it sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the mixture.

Season and store

  1. Add 1 scant quart of vinegar, 1 pint of sugar, 1 large tablespoon of celery seed, and 1 large tablespoon of white mustard, then mix well and store in a jar.

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. Celery + mustardtop 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. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 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

Peppers
Provide the bulk of the relish and its fresh, sweet-sharp vegetable flavor.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and crunch that holds up after the relish has been salted and drained.
Onions
Contribute pungency and savory depth that mellows during the overnight salting.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the relish and gives it its tangy bite.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar and rounds out the relish's sweetness.
Celery seed
Adds a warm, aromatic celery-like flavor to the relish.

The step that matters

Salting overnight and draining. Salt draws water out of the chopped vegetables by osmosis, so they stay crisp rather than soggy. Draining off that liquid before adding vinegar and sugar keeps the relish firm and the brine from being diluted.

Swap the onion

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

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

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