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Spanish Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, peppers, and spices in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions with salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  2. Wash the salt off the vegetables.

Combine and pickle

  1. Add scalded cauliflowers, sliced green peppers, and grated horseradish to the bowl.

  2. Mix in white mustard seed, ground mustard, turmeric, salad oil, and celery seed.

  3. Transfer the mixture to jars and pour boiling vinegar over to cover.

  4. Add sugar to taste and stir the pickle daily for two weeks until ready to use.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickle.
Green tomatoes
Add tart, firm pieces that hold their shape in the brine.
Onions
Contribute savory flavor and aroma to the pickle.
White mustard seed
Provides sharp, pungent flavor that mellows during the long steeping.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving it and sharpening its flavor.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions by osmosis, firming them and reducing the liquid that would otherwise dilute the pickle. Rinsing afterward removes the excess salt so the pickle does not taste overly salty.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, cauliflower, pepper, horseradish, mustard, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cauliflower, pepper, horseradish, mustard, 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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