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Sliced Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, green peppers, and onions in a vinegar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sliced Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cucumbers, green peppers, and white onions, then soak them in brine for 2 hours.

Make the pickle

  1. In a large pot, boil the white vinegar with the ginger, cloves, black pepper, and turmeric.

  2. Add the soaked vegetables to the boiling vinegar mixture and bring to a boil.

  3. Once cooled, stir in the horseradish, celery seed, and turmeric.

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. 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. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

Cucumbers
Forms the bulk of the pickle and gives it a crisp bite.
White vinegar
Supplies the acidity that sharpens the pickle and helps preserve it.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat to the pickle.
Brown sugar
Balances the vinegar's sharpness with sweetness and depth.
Green peppers
Adds bulk, a mild bitterness and crisp texture.
White onions
Adds savory sharpness and bulk to the mix.

The step that matters

Add the soaked vegetables to the boiling vinegar mixture and bring to a boil. The vinegar must be fully boiling before the vegetables go in so the pickle heats quickly. Vegetables held in hot acid too long soften and lose their crunch, so timing matters.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, vinegar, horseradish, celery, mustard, 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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