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Celery Pickle

A pickled mixture of white cabbage, celery, mustard seed, salt, sugar, ginger, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Celery Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. In a porcelain-lined kettle, combine mustard seed, salt, cabbage, sugar, celery, ginger root, vinegar, and turmeric.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 4 to 5 hours until the cabbage and celery are perfectly tender.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer the pickle into jars, ensuring the vinegar covers it well.

  2. Cork the jars tightly and avoid boiling the pickle hard at any time.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and becomes tender, soft and absorbent during the long cook.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that stands up to the long cooking time.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Celery
Adds a savoury, herbal flavour and softens into the pickle as it cooks.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and an earthy, warm flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. Boiling hard for hours can break down the vegetables into mush and drive off vinegar, so the pickle loses texture and sharpness. A slow, steady heat keeps the cabbage and celery tender but intact.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, celery, ginger, vinegar, turmeric):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, celery, ginger, vinegar, turmeric. 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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