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Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, beans, cauliflower, peppers, horseradish, and nasturtium seeds in cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle the salt over the cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, beans, cauliflower, and nasturtium seeds. Place in a bag and drain until morning.

  2. Put all the drained vegetables in a kettle and cover with cider vinegar.

Make the pickling liquor

  1. Add the brown sugar, mace, turmeric, ground mustard, mustard seed, celery seed, and whole pepper bag.

  2. Place on the back of the range and let it stand for one hour or more, then boil for about twenty minutes.

Pack and finish

  1. Remove the pickles from the kettle and pack them into bottles or jars.

  2. Boil the remaining mixture down until there is enough to fill the bottles.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  5. Beans + cauliflowertop 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

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulk vegetable body of the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Acid that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and reducing liquid before pickling.
Mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that carries through the pickling liquid.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and absorbs the spiced vinegar flavours.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the vegetables overnight. Salt draws out water from the vegetables; if they are not drained well, the pickle stays watery and dilutes the vinegar, and the vegetables lose crispness.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, beans, cauliflower, pepper, horseradish, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, beans, cauliflower, pepper, horseradish, 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 mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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