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Preserve

Superior Mixed Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture with cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, beans, onions, spices, sugar, turmeric, egg yolks, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Superior Mixed Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine chopped cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, beans, and sliced onions in a bowl.

  2. Cover with coarse sea salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the mixture from the brine.

Make the pickle

  1. Add spices, sugar, turmeric, and mashed egg yolks to the drained vegetables.

  2. Boil the mixture with cider vinegar until well combined.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Corn + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Beans + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the crisp, firm bulk that holds its texture through the pickling.
Cucumbers
Adds crunch and fresh body to the pickle mix.
Cider vinegar
Supplies the acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Egg yolks
Mashed into the mixture to add richness and body to the pickle.

The step that matters

Draining after the 24-hour salt stand. Salt draws water out of the vegetables, so draining off the brine is what keeps the pickle from becoming watery. Leaving too much liquid in the mixture dilutes the vinegar and weakens the final texture and flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cucumber, tomato, corn, beans, sugar, turmeric):

  1. Cauliflowerfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cucumber, tomato, corn, beans, sugar, turmeric. 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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