Skip to main content
Main

Green Bell Pepper Pickle

A pickled green bell pepper stuffed with a seasoned cabbage mixture and preserved in hot spiced vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Green Bell Pepper Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peppers

  1. Make a slit in the peppers and remove the seeds.

  2. Soak the peppers in brine.

  3. Cover the peppers with water.

Make the cabbage filling

  1. Scald the finely chopped cabbage.

  2. Add the mustard seed, chopped celery or celery seed, grated horseradish, and coarse sea salt to the cabbage.

  3. Squeeze dry the mixture.

Stuff and pack

  1. Stuff the peppers with the mixture.

  2. Close the peppers with a few stitches.

  3. Place the stuffed peppers in large stone jars.

  4. Cover with hot spiced vinegar made from 1 gallon of vinegar, ½ pound of sugar, and spices tied in cheesecloth bags.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green bell peppers
Form the pickle shell that holds the filling and softens as it pickles.
Hard white cabbage
Provides the crisp, bulky filling that stays firm in the vinegar.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during pickling.
Hot spiced vinegar
Acidity that preserves the peppers and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Squeeze dry the mixture. Excess water left in the cabbage dilutes the vinegar and can make the pickle soft and watery, so the filling should be pressed well before stuffing.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes