Name: To Pickle Barberries
Ingredients: 2 quarts of brine (salt and water strong enough to float an egg); 1 pint of white wine vinegar; ½ pound of brown sugar; loose barberries

Why it works: White wine and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,776 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Pickle Barberries

Ingredients

2 quarts of brine (salt and water strong enough to float an egg)
1 pint of white wine vinegar
½ pound of brown sugar
loose barberries

Directions

Prepare

Pick out all the loose barberries and set aside the bunches.

Make the pickling liquid

Boil the brine with the loose barberries, white wine vinegar, and brown sugar until combined.
Let the mixture cool.
Strain the liquid and pour it over the barberries in bunches.

Seal

Tie the jars tightly.

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.

White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,776 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,586 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Egg + white winetop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,662 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

White wine vinegar: Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickles their tangy flavour.
Brown sugar: Balances the sourness of the vinegar with sweetness and adds depth of flavour.
Salt: Seasons the brine and helps season the barberries as it is drawn into them.

“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.