Name: Cabbage Pickle
Ingredients: 1 quart raw cabbage, chopped fine; 1 quart boiled beets, chopped; 2 cups sugar; 1 tablespoon salt; 1 teaspoon black pepper; ½ teaspoon red pepper; 1 cup grated horseradish

Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabbage Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Mix all ingredients together thoroughly.
Seal in airtight jars.

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.

Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,646 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sugar + horseradishtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,314 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Cabbage + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,037 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

Raw cabbage: Forms the bulk of the pickle and provides a crisp, fresh texture.
Boiled beets: Add colour and an earthy sweetness to the mixture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the horseradish and pepper.
Grated horseradish: Supplies the sharp, pungent heat that characterises the pickle.