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Mixed Mustard Pickles

A mixed vegetable pickle prepared with a mustard, turmeric, celery seed, sugar, and flour dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Mixed Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook the pickles, onions, cauliflowers, string beans, large pickles, green mangoes, and green tomatoes separately in salt water until tender.

  2. Transfer the cooked vegetables to ice-cold alum water to harden.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, heat the vinegar in a pot.

  2. Stir in the yellow mustard, ground turmeric, celery seed, sugar, and flour.

  3. Simmer the mixture for one hour.

  4. Bottle the dressing 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. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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. Cauliflower + beanstop 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

Yellow mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the dressing as its starch swells when heated.
Ground turmeric
Gives the dressing its characteristic yellow colour.
Celery seed
Contributes a savoury, aromatic note to the dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the hot dressing. Flour added to hot liquid can clump unless it is blended in smoothly first. Simmering long enough lets the starch swell and thicken the dressing evenly.

Swap the mango

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cauliflower, beans, tomato, mustard, turmeric, 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.

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