Skip to main content
Main

Pickles

Pickles made from sliced radishes and onions, seasoned with spices, boiled in vinegar, and preserved in jars with alum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Radish and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 508 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the radishes into thin pieces.

  2. Peel and quarter the onions.

Pickle

  1. Combine the onions and spices in vinegar and boil until flavorful.

  2. Place the pickles in stone jars, adding spices and 1 teaspoon of alum to each jar.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar over the pickles and cover tightly.

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. Radish + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Radish + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetal (cream, earthy).

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Radishes
Supply the main crisp texture and sharp, peppery flavor.
Onions
Add savory flavor that mellows and sweetens somewhat during pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that flavors the pickles and keeps them preserved.
Alum
Helps firm the vegetables so they stay crisp rather than soft.

The step that matters

Pour the hot vinegar over the pickles and cover tightly. The hot vinegar softens the vegetables' surfaces so the acid and spices penetrate them, and a tight cover keeps the jar sealed so the brine stays in contact with every piece.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (radish, vinegar):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against radish, 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.

You might also like

Horseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce23 recipesHorseradish ButterHorseradish Butter6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes