Skip to main content
Main

Beet Pickle

A preserved beet relish made with boiled beets, cabbage, onions, horseradish, sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Beet Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the chopped beets, cabbage, onions, horseradish, sugar, salt, black pepper, and cayenne in a large bowl and mix well until all ingredients are evenly distributed.

  2. Transfer the mixture into glass jars.

  3. Pour cold vinegar over the mixture to cover it completely.

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. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 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

Beets
Provide the main bulk, earthy flavor, and the pickle's deep red color.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk that holds texture after pickling.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat that mellows as the pickle sits.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish with sweetness.
Cold vinegar
Acts as the pickling liquid that preserves and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Covering completely with cold vinegar. Vegetables left exposed above the liquid can spoil and discolor. Keeping everything submerged in vinegar keeps the pickle acidic and stable.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, horseradish, sugar, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, horseradish, sugar, pepper, 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

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes