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Onion and Pepper Pickle

A pickle made from onions and peppers stewed with vinegar, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Onion and Pepper Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the onions and peppers.

Cook

  1. In a pot, combine the chopped onions, peppers, salt, cinnamon, cloves, 4 cups of vinegar, and sugar.

  2. Stew the mixture slowly for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add 4 more cups of vinegar and boil slowly for several more hours until the mixture does not separate.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Form the bulk of the relish, softening and releasing sweetness as they cook down.
Peppers
Add body and mild sharpness that blends into the cooked mixture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves and sharpens the flavor during long cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the cooked mixture.
Ground cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the cooked mixture.

The step that matters

Slow simmer until the mixture does not separate. Long, gentle cooking lets the onions and peppers soften and release moisture so the vinegar, sugar and spices blend into a cohesive mixture. Boiling too hard or stopping early can leave it watery or separated.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cinnamon, clove, 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.

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