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Mustard Pickle III

A pickled cucumber and cauliflower mixture flavored with mustard, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mustard Pickle III

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil cucumbers and cauliflower in salted water until tender.

  2. Boil onions until tender.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix French mustard, flour, and turmeric, then smooth the mixture with a little vinegar.

  2. In a kettle, heat sugar and vinegar until hot.

  3. Stir in the mixed mustard.

  4. Add the other ingredients.

  5. Boil for 10 minutes.

Seal

  1. Seal while hot.

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

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp pickled vegetable bulk of the relish.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and bulk that holds up to the pickling liquid.
Flour
Thickens the mustard mixture so the sauce clings to the vegetables.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickling liquid.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the mixed mustard. Flour-thickened mustard can form lumps if added to hot liquid without being smoothed first. Smoothing with vinegar and stirring it in gradually keeps the sauce even, so it thickens uniformly as it boils.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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