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Pretty Pickles

A pickled mixture of raw cabbage and boiled beets with sugar, salt, pepper, horseradish, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pretty Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chopped raw cabbage and boiled beets in a large bowl.

  2. Add the sugar, salt, black pepper, red pepper, and grated horseradish, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  3. Cover the mixture with cold vinegar.

  4. Seal the container to keep it airtight.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cabbage
Provides the bulk and crisp texture that holds up in the brine.
Beets
Add colour and an earthy sweetness to the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar and adds sweetness.
Cold vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Horseradish
Contributes pungent heat that sharpens the flavour.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Radishfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

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