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Mustard Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and peppers in a mustard‑turmeric sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut all cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and peppers into small pieces, not chopped.

  2. Prepare a brine with 1 cup salt and 1 gallon water.

  3. Soak the vegetables in the brine for 24 hours.

  4. Scald the vegetables in the brine until thoroughly heated, then drain well.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix 6 tablespoons mustard, 1 tablespoon turmeric, 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, and 2 quarts vinegar.

  2. Combine dry ingredients with a little cold vinegar, then heat while stirring until very smooth.

Finish and bottle

  1. Pour the mustard mixture over the pickles and stir to combine.

  2. Bottle the pickles.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it becomes smooth and clings to the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and pungency that defines the pickle's taste.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Salt
Draws water out of the vegetables during the brine soak, firming their texture.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and a mild earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Combine dry ingredients with cold vinegar before heating. Flour and mustard added straight to hot liquid clump and form lumps. Mixing them into a smooth paste with a little cold vinegar first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce heats to a smooth, uniform texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, turmeric, flour. 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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