Name: Pickling and Catsups
Ingredients: ½ ounce black peppercorns; ½ ounce allspice; ½ ounce cloves; 1 tablespoon grated horseradish; 1 teaspoon mustard seed; 1 tablespoon chopped garlic; 1 teaspoon table salt; 3 pints wine or cider vinegar

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 ↓

Pickling and Catsups

Ingredients

Directions

Bruise the black peppercorns, allspice, and cloves in a mortar.
Add grated horseradish, mustard seed, chopped garlic, and table salt.
Pour 3 pints of wine or cider vinegar over the mixture in an unglazed jar.
Seal the jar tightly to prevent evaporation and place it by a fire for 3 days, shaking it frequently.
Parboil the pickles in brine until scalded, then let them cool and drain completely.
Run a rolling pin through the pickles to help them absorb the vinegar.
Pack the pickles into jars and cover them with the warm spiced vinegar.

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.

Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together654 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Horseradish + garlictop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together719 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, clove, horseradish, mustard, wine):

Cinnamonfits better
Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, clove, horseradish, mustard, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.