Skip to main content
Main

Mustard Pickles II

A pickled cucumber and vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, turmeric, celery seed, sugar, and flour, boiled in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pickles II

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cover cucumbers, sliced cucumber, onions, cauliflower, and green peppers with scalding brine and let stand overnight.

  2. Drain the vegetables.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, turmeric, celery seed, sugar, and flour with a little cold vinegar.

  2. Add this mixture to 3 quarts of vinegar and bring to a boil for 2 minutes.

Cook the pickles

  1. Add the pickles and boil for 5 to 8 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 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

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickles.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and absorbs the flavour of the sauce.
Mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar sauce so it clings to the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sours the pickles.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the mustard paste. Flour clumps if it meets hot liquid directly. Mixing it first with cold vinegar into a smooth paste lets it disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More mustard pickles recipes

Mixed 7 See all 151 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipes