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Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, peppers, beans, onions, tomatoes, cauliflower, and spices in cider vinegar.

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 ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the cucumbers, beans, and cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle with ½ pint of coarse sea salt. Let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the mixture.

Season and cook

  1. Add ½ pound mustard, ½ pound white mustard seed, 2 ounces celery seed, ½ ounce cloves, and ½ ounce allspice. Mix well.

  2. Place in a kettle. Cover with cider vinegar.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Put into Mason 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.

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

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

  2. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, firm body of the pickle once salted and cooked in vinegar.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and helping them keep their crunch.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that mellows as the pickle is cooked in vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Drain the mixture after salting overnight. Salt draws water out of the vegetables. If they are not drained well, the excess liquid dilutes the vinegar and the pickle can turn soft and less well preserved.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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