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Yellow Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of cauliflower, cucumbers, beans, onions, peppers, celery, and spices in a vinegar and olive oil brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cauliflower 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 ↓

Yellow Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the cauliflower and beans until tender.

  2. Remove cucumbers from brine and rinse them.

  3. Chop some celery finely. Cut the rest into 1-inch pieces.

  4. In a jar, layer the ingredients.

Make the brine

  1. In a saucepan, mix mustard and turmeric with olive oil. Combine with vinegar and add sugar.

  2. Tie celery seed, mustard seed, pepper, and allspice in a bag. Add to the mixture.

  3. Scald the mixture while stirring continuously to prevent burning.

Pack and seal

  1. Cover the jar with a lid. Seal tightly for 1 to 2 weeks.

  2. Bottle the mixture. Seal the mixture.

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. Turmeric + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cucumbers
Form the crisp, briny body of the pickle after brining.
Cauliflower
Adds bulk and a firm, tender texture that soaks up the brine.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps season the brine.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their yellow color and an earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Scald the mixture while stirring continuously. Stirring keeps the sugar, mustard and spices from settling and scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would give the brine a burnt taste.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, pepper, mustard, allspice, turmeric, cauliflower. 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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