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To Make Yellow Pickle

A pickled condiment made from ginger, horseradish, mustard seed, celery seed, mace, nutmeg, white pepper, cider vinegar, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Make Yellow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine all ingredients in a stone jar.

  2. Pour boiling salt water over the mixture and let it stand for 48 hours.

Dry and store

  1. Press out the water and spread the mixture on a table covered with a soft cloth in direct sunlight.

  2. Once dried, transfer the mixture into stone 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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Horseradish + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 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

Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the mixture.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat and a clean, biting flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that builds through the mixture.
Ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and a gentle bite.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and an earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Drying thoroughly before storing. Water left in the mixture after pressing lets it spoil or grow mould in the jars. Drying it fully in the sun before transferring it to stone jars removes that moisture so the pickle keeps well.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, horseradish, mustard, celery, mace, nutmeg, cider):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, horseradish, mustard, celery, mace, nutmeg, cider. 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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