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Green Pickle

A pickled cucumber mixture with onions, green tomatoes, peppers, horseradish, mustard, turmeric, sugar, cloves, celery seed, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Green Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine cucumbers, onions, green tomatoes, peppers, horseradish, ground mustard, turmeric, sugar, whole cloves, white mustard seed, vinegar, and celery seed in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Horseradish + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together437 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and supply the crisp, fresh body of the finished relish.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the mixture and gives the pickles their sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the pickles.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, mustardy flavor that deepens during the long simmer.
Green tomatoes
Add bulk and tartness that soften and absorb the spiced vinegar as they cook.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly for 1 hour. A gentle simmer lets the vinegar and spices penetrate the vegetables and softens them evenly. Boiling too hard can break the vegetables apart and scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pot, so stir occasionally to prevent sticking.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, pepper, horseradish, mustard, turmeric, sugar. 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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