Name: Mustard Pickles
Ingredients: 1 quart vinegar; ½ pound sugar; ¼ pound ground mustard; pickles

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

1 quart vinegar
½ pound sugar
¼ pound ground mustard
pickles

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

In a pot, combine the vinegar, sugar, and ground mustard.
Bring the mixture to a boil.

Pickle and seal

Add the pickles and bring to a boiling point again.
Seal the pickles in airtight jars.

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.

Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,424 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

Vinegar: Provides the sharp acidity that gives the pickles their tang and helps preserve them.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground mustard: Supplies the pungent mustard flavor that defines the dish.

“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.