Name: Pickles
Ingredients: 3 gallons vinegar; turmeric; horseradish; spices of your choice

Why it works: Turmeric and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 437 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickles

Ingredients

3 gallons vinegar
turmeric
horseradish
spices of your choice

Directions

Combine vinegar, turmeric, horseradish, and spices in a brass kettle.
Boil until the vinegar tastes strongly of the ingredients.
Let the mixture cool.
Pour the cooled vinegar over the pickles in clean 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.

Turmeric + horseradishtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together437 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + turmerictop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,214 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).