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Mustard Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, peppers, seasoned with mustard, turmeric, sugar, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Soak cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and peppers in brine for 24 hours.

  2. Scald the mixture but do not boil.

  3. Drain off all the water.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. Mix mustard, turmeric, and flour with a little cold vinegar.

  2. Pour the mixture into the vinegar. Heat it.

  3. Add the pickles.

  4. Boil until it thickens.

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. Turmeric + mustardtop 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

Yellow mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar sauce as it cooks, giving the pickle its body.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its bright yellow color and a mild, earthy aroma.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives tang.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness.

The step that matters

Scald the mixture but do not boil. Heating the vegetables just enough softens them while keeping them crisp. Boiling at this stage would make them mushy and waterlogged before the sauce is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

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