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An Excellent Pickle of Unripe Codims, Plums, Damsons, Apricots, Peaches, Nectarines, or Other Unripe Fruit

A pickle of unripe codlins or other unripe fruit, brined and seasoned with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

An Excellent Pickle of Unripe Codims, Plums, Damsons, Apricots, Peaches, Nectarines, or Other Unripe Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Brine the fruit

  1. Make a brine with enough salt in water to float an egg.

  2. Boil the brine and skim it.

  3. When cold, soak the unripe codlins in the brine for three days.

  4. Make a fresh pickle.

  5. Soak the codlins in the fresh pickle.

  6. Remove the codlins from the pickle.

  7. Wipe the codlins.

Stuff the codlins

  1. Cut out the stalk piece.

  2. Use a scoop to remove the core without piercing the other end.

  3. Mix equal parts mustard seeds and cumin seeds, half the amount of coriander seeds, sliced horseradish, pounded chilies with salt, Jamaica pepper, mace, and cloves.

  4. Fill the core with the mixture.

  5. Replace the stalk piece.

  6. Tie the codlin with string.

Pickle in the jar

  1. Place some of the mixture in a stone jar.

  2. Add vinegar to the jar.

  3. Boil the mixture.

  4. Add the codlins while the mixture is boiling hot.

  5. When cold, cover the jar.

  6. The next day, uncover the jar.

  7. Place the jar in a 300°F (150°C) oven until the codlins are a nice color.

  8. When cold, seal the jar.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cumin + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cumin + clovetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,306 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Coriander + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Unripe codlins
Form the main body of the pickle and absorb the brine and spiced vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the fruit and firms its flesh during the brine soak.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavors the pickling liquid.
Mustard seeds
Add pungent, sharp flavor to the spiced filling.
Sliced horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that carries through the filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture before adding the codlins. The pickling liquid must be boiling hot when the fruit goes in, so the heat helps seal the surface and reduce the chance of spoilage. Adding fruit to cool liquid can leave it under-preserved.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, cumin, coriander, horseradish, pepper, clove, vinegar):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, cumin, coriander, horseradish, pepper, clove, 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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