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Chopped Pickle

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes, onions, and peppers with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chopped Pickle

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish 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 ↓

Chopped Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and peppers finely and separately.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables and add 3 cups of coarse sea salt.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight, then drain well in the morning.

Season and pickle

  1. Add ½ pound of mustard seed, 2 tablespoons of ground allspice, 2 tablespoons of ground cloves, and 1 cup of grated horseradish.

  2. Pour 3 quarts of boiling vinegar over the mixture.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Allspice + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together654 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the relish and give it its fresh, tart body.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables so they drain and stay crisp.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that stands up to the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and giving the relish its sharp tang.
Horseradish
Contributes pungent heat that mellows as the relish stands.

The step that matters

Draining after the overnight salt rest. Salt draws water out of the vegetables; draining thoroughly removes that liquid so the relish stays firm and does not dilute the hot vinegar pickle.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, mustard, allspice, clove, horseradish, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, mustard, allspice, clove, horseradish, vinegar. 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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