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Spanish Pickle

A mixed vegetable pickle made with cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, onions, beans, and spices, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice cucumbers into 1‑inch thick slices.

  2. Thinly slice tomatoes.

  3. Sprinkle tomatoes with salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  4. Rinse off the salt from the tomatoes.

  5. Grate horseradish.

Make the spice paste

  1. Mix grated horseradish with mustard seed and chopped red peppers.

  2. Add cinnamon, mustard, celery seed, turmeric, and oil to the mixture.

Pickle and rest

  1. Combine all vegetables in a pan and mix in the spice paste thoroughly.

  2. Scald enough vinegar to cover the vegetables and pour it over them while hot.

  3. Stir the mixture every day or two.

  4. Let it sit for about two weeks before using.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + green beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 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

Cucumbers
Provide the bulk of the crisp vegetable body in the pickle.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body, with salt drawing out moisture first.
Vinegar
Acidifies the pickle, preserving the vegetables and sharpening the flavor.
Mustard seed
Contributes pungent, sharp flavor to the spice paste.
White onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the brine.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that mellows during the long rest.

The step that matters

Rinse off the salt from the tomatoes. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes over 24 hours. If the salt is not fully rinsed away, the pickle will taste overly salty and the vegetables may be too limp to hold their texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, tomato, green beans, sugar, horseradish, mustard):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, tomato, green beans, sugar, horseradish, mustard. 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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