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Corn Relish

A cooked relish of corn, cabbage, onions, green peppers, brown sugar, salt, mustard, and optional vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Corn Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scrape and cut off all the kernels from the corn, collecting all the juice.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, combine the corn, cabbage, onions, green peppers, brown sugar, salt, and mustard.

  2. Place the pot on the back of the stove and boil gently for 3 hours.

  3. If the mixture is too thick, thin it with vinegar.

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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn
Provides the bulk of the relish and its sweet, fresh flavor.
Cabbage
Adds body and a crisp-tender texture after long simmering.
Onions
Contribute savory depth and aroma as they soften during cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the relish as it reduces.
Green peppers
Add a grassy, slightly bitter note and some texture.

The step that matters

Simmering for 3 hours on low heat. Gentle, prolonged simmering lets the vegetables soften and the liquid reduce into a thick relish. Boiling too hard can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pot and make the relish bitter, so the heat needs to stay low and the mixture should be stirred regularly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, cabbage, pepper, sugar, mustard, 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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