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Pickles, Mixed

A quick mixed pickle of onions, apples, cucumbers, vinegar, sherry, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Pickles, Mixed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the onions, apples, and cucumbers thinly.

  2. Place them into wide-necked bottles.

Pickle

  1. Add the sherry, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Cover with vinegar and cork closely.

  3. The pickles can be used the following day but should not be kept for long.

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. White wine + sherrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  3. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Their tartness adds acidity that balances the sweet onions and mild vegetables.
White wine vinegar
Acetic acid preserves the vegetables and gives the pickles their sharp, tangy flavour.
Small mild onions
Provide the bulk of the pickle and mild sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cucumbers
Contribute crisp texture and fresh flavour to the mixed pickle.
Sherry
Adds a rich, aromatic note that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cork the bottles closely after covering with vinegar. Sealing the bottles keeps air out and holds the vinegar around the sliced vegetables, which keeps them submerged and limits spoilage while they pickle.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cucumber, white wine, vinegar, sherry, pepper):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cucumber, white wine, vinegar, sherry, pepper. 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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