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English Mixed Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix of tomatoes, cucumbers, cauliflower, string beans, celery, peppers, and onions in vinegar with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

English Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the vegetables finely.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

Cook and pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, ground cloves, allspice, black pepper, turmeric, and mustard seed, then bring the vinegar and spices to a boil.

  2. Add the vegetables and scald until tender and slightly yellow.

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

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

  3. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour to the spiced vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the chopped vegetables so they stay crisp and absorb the vinegar less watery.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm bulk of the mix, holding its shape after scalding.

The step that matters

Scalding the vegetables. Scalding in hot spiced vinegar must stop once the vegetables are just tender and slightly yellow. Overcooking softens the texture and dulls the colour, while undercooking leaves them raw and less safely preserved.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, cauliflower, beans, celery, pepper, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, cauliflower, beans, celery, pepper, vinegar. 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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