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Chop Pickle

A pickled mixture of tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, cabbage, and cucumber pickles seasoned with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Chop Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the tomatoes, onions, green bell peppers, cabbage, and cucumber pickles.

  2. Layer the chopped vegetables in a stone jar, sprinkling with coarse sea salt. Weight down the mixture and let it soak overnight.

  3. The next morning, squeeze out all the juice.

Make the pickle

  1. Add the grated horseradish, pulverized allspice, whole cloves, ground mustard, celery seed, black ground pepper, ground cinnamon, white mustard seed, turmeric, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Cook the mixture without boiling until soft.

  3. Chop the cucumbers and mix them in when cooking.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide bulk and body, softening during the long cooking into the chopped pickle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and spices.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the mixture and gives it its sharp, tangy flavor.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and crisp texture that softens somewhat during salting and cooking.
Cucumber pickles
Contribute tangy, briny flavor and crunch to the chopped mixture.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that deepens as the pickle cooks.

The step that matters

Cook without boiling until soft. Gentle heat softens the chopped vegetables evenly while keeping the vinegar and sugar from scorching or breaking down into a harsh, uneven texture.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, cabbage, cucumber, horseradish, allspice, clove):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, cabbage, cucumber, horseradish, allspice, clove. 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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