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Mixed Pickle

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes and cabbage seasoned with salt, mixed spice, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and cabbage work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 333 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mixed Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle the chopped tomatoes and cabbage with salt and let them stand overnight.

  2. Squeeze out excess liquid from the vegetables.

Cook and seal

  1. Add mixed spice, vinegar, salt, and sugar to the vegetables.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Seal the mixture in 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.

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. Tomato + cabbagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together333 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cabbage + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,037 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and, with the salt, release liquid that is later squeezed out.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and bulk that holds up during boiling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the excess liquid. Salting draws water out of the vegetables. If the liquid is not squeezed out well, the extra water dilutes the vinegar and sugar in the boiled mixture, which can make the pickle watery and weaken its tang.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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