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Mustard Pickles I

A pickled vegetable mix with mustard, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cover pickles, onions, tomatoes, musk, watermelon, green peppers, and cauliflower with salt water overnight.

  2. In the morning, scald the mixture in vinegar until tender.

Make the mustard paste

  1. In a separate pot, combine cider vinegar, mustard, flour, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and turmeric.

  2. Boil until it becomes a smooth paste.

Combine and pickle

  1. Mix the scalded vegetables with the mustard paste to pickle.

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

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that defines the classic mustard pickle taste.
Flour
Thickens the mustard mixture into a smooth, clinging paste.
Cider vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, providing tang and preserving the vegetables.
Cauliflower
Provides the firm, crisp vegetable body that holds its texture in the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow color and earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Boil the mustard paste until smooth. Flour thickens only when heated enough to gelatinize its starch. Stop too early and the paste stays lumpy or thin, so it will not coat the vegetables properly. Stir constantly to prevent scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, cauliflower, cider, vinegar, mustard, flour):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, cauliflower, cider, vinegar, mustard, flour. 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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