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Chopped Pickles

A pickled mixture of chopped tomatoes, onions, cabbage, peppers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chopped Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, ripe tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and green peppers finely.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables with the coarse sea salt and let them drain for 24 hours.

Make the pickle

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the grated horseradish, black pepper, white mustard, black mustard, celery seed, and sugar.

  2. Add enough vinegar to cover the mixture and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk and firm texture of the pickle.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and body that holds up through pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and concentrating flavor.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Grated horseradish
Contributes a sharp, pungent heat that mellows during simmering.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables for 24 hours. Salt pulls water out of the chopped vegetables by osmosis. Draining well removes that liquid so the pickle stays firm and does not dilute the vinegar.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cabbage, pepper, horseradish, mustard, celery, sugar):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cabbage, pepper, horseradish, mustard, celery, 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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