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Salad

Hodge Podge

A sweet and spicy pickled vegetable mixture of green tomatoes, onions, apples, cucumbers, and cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Hodge Podge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the green tomatoes, onions, apples, cucumbers, and cabbage.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped vegetables and fruits with coarse sea salt and let them stand for 12 hours.

  3. After 12 hours, pour off some of the green juice.

Season and combine

  1. Add the white mustard seed, brown sugar, allspice, and cloves to the mixture.

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 + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

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

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 of the pickle and release juice when salted.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and body to the chopped mixture.
Cucumbers
Add crunch and moisture to the finished pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity and spice.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that mellows during pickling.

The step that matters

Salting and resting the chopped vegetables. Salt draws water out of the vegetables by osmosis, so the 12-hour rest firms them and removes excess liquid. Pouring off the released juice before adding sugar and spices keeps the pickle from becoming watery.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, cucumber, cabbage, mustard, sugar, allspice):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, cucumber, cabbage, mustard, sugar, allspice. 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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