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Chopped Pickle

A pickled mix of green tomatoes, red sweet peppers, cabbage, celery, horseradish, cloves, mustard seed, cucumbers, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Chopped Pickle

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard 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 ↓

Chopped Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes and red sweet peppers finely.

  2. Cover with salt water and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain and dry the mixture.

Mix and pickle

  1. Add chopped cabbage, chopped celery, grated horseradish, cloves, mustard seed, and salt to taste.

  2. Add the small cucumbers or cut ordinary cucumbers into strips.

  3. Cover everything with cold cider vinegar.

  4. If desired to keep, seal in self-sealing jars.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Horseradish + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + cucumbertop 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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and give it a firm, chunky texture.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and body to the mixture as it pickles.
Mustard seed
Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and flavour to the pickle.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and fresh flavour to the chopped mixture.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that intensifies with time in the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the mixture. Salt water draws moisture out of the vegetables; if they stay wet before the vinegar is added, the pickle will be watery and dilute the vinegar's preserving strength.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cabbage, celery, horseradish, clove, mustard, cucumber. 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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