Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, cabbage, green pepper, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, onions, cabbage, and green pepper in a bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Let stand for 1 hour.

  4. Scald the mixture in weak vinegar.

  5. Place the mixture in a bag.

  6. Let it drain for 3 hours.

Make the dressing and combine

  1. In a separate bowl, mix horseradish, ground mustard, celery seed, turmeric, sugar, and white mustard seed.

  2. Boil the mixture in good vinegar.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pickled vegetables.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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.
White onions
Add savory flavor and bulk to the pickled vegetables.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk to the pickled mixture.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavor to the brine.
Horseradish
Contributes sharp, pungent heat to the dressing.

The step that matters

Draining the salted vegetables. Salt draws water out of the vegetables, and draining removes it. If they are not drained well, excess liquid dilutes the hot vinegar mixture and leaves the pickles soft and watery.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, pepper, horseradish, mustard, celery, 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes