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To Pickle Roots

A pickled root vegetable mixture of carrots, salsify, beet roots, and onions in vinegar with pepper, ginger, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,377 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pickle Roots

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice or cut the roots into small pieces and slightly boil them in vinegar without losing their crispness.

  2. Add the common spices; for beet roots, include button onions or sliced Spanish onions, layering them alternately in a jar.

  3. Boil 1 quart of vinegar with 1 ounce of mixed pepper, ½ ounce of ginger, and some coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour the cooled vinegar mixture over the beet roots and onions in the jar.

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. Carrot + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  5. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 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

Carrots
Firm root pieces that hold their crispness through the pickling liquid.
Salsify
Firm root pieces that hold their crispness through the pickling liquid.
Beet roots
Adds colour and a mild sweetness to the pickled mix.
Vinegar
Acid that preserves the roots and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Button onions
Adds pungency that mellows during pickling and contrasts with the roots.

The step that matters

Slightly boil the roots in vinegar. Boiling briefly softens the roots enough to take up the vinegar while keeping their crispness. Overcooking makes them soft and mushy, so they should be checked early and removed once just tender-crisp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, vinegar, pepper, ginger):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Cabbagefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, vinegar, pepper, ginger. 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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