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Salad

Hyden Salad

A fermented cabbage and tomato salad with spices, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Hyden Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, green tomatoes, peppers, and onions.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped vegetables with salt and let them drain overnight.

Make the relish

  1. In a large bowl, mix the mustard, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, celery seed, turmeric, and sugar.

  2. Add the drained vegetables to the mixture and stir well.

  3. Cover the mixture with vinegar and boil until tender.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and holds its crisp texture until cooked.
Green tomatoes
Add tartness and body, and release moisture that the salting draws out.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften during boiling.
Sugar
Sweetens the salad and balances the sharpness of the vinegar and tomatoes.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the salad its sharp flavour.
Turmeric
Gives the salad its yellow colour and a warm, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the cabbage, tomatoes, and onions by osmosis. Draining well removes that liquid so the salad stays firm and does not become watery in the vinegar.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, onion, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, onion, mustard, ginger, cinnamon, clove. 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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