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Mustard Pickles

Pickled green peppers and cauliflower in a mustard-flavored vinegar paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 514 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cover the chopped green peppers and cauliflower with coarse sea salt and let sit overnight.

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

Make the paste

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

  2. Boil the mixture until it becomes a smooth paste.

Pickle

  1. Mix the vegetables with the 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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 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

Cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp-tender bulk of the pickle that holds up to the sauce.
Green peppers
Add crunch and a fresh, grassy bite to the pickled vegetables.
Mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavor that defines mustard pickles.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a smooth, spoonable paste that coats the vegetables.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Turmeric
Colors the pickling paste a bright yellow and adds earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the paste until smooth. Flour thickens only when it is heated enough for its starch to swell. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and lumps, while stirring it smooth as it boils gives an even coating on the vegetables.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

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