Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Pickles

A mixture of tomatoes, cauliflower, onions, celery, and cucumbers pickled in vinegar, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber 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 ↓

Spanish Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the tomatoes, cauliflower, onions, and celery finely.

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

  3. Drain the vegetables and boil them in a little weak vinegar, then drain again.

Make the pickle

  1. In fresh vinegar, mix 2 cups of sugar and 4 tablespoons of flour to make a paste.

  2. Add the vegetables to the vinegar mixture and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Finally, add 1 quart of small cucumbers.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 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

Tomatoes
Break down into the body of the pickle, adding moisture and a soft texture.
Cauliflower
Provides firm pieces that hold their shape through the boiling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a paste that coats the vegetables.
Small cucumbers
Add crisp texture, added last so they stay firmer than the cooked vegetables.

The step that matters

Salting the chopped vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis. Skipping or shortening this step leaves more water in the finished pickle, which dilutes the vinegar and makes the texture softer.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cauliflower, celery, vinegar, sugar, flour, cucumber. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes