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Mustard Pickles

Pickles of cucumbers, onions, and cauliflower flavored with mustard, brown sugar, turmeric, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle cucumbers, onions, and cauliflower separately with salt.

  2. Cover with water and let sit overnight.

Make the pickles

  1. Add the remaining ingredients with a little cold vinegar.

  2. Heat the rest of the vinegar to boiling and pour over the hard pickles three times.

  3. Let simmer and then pour over the pickles.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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 vegetable body that holds its texture in the brine.
Cauliflower
Adds firm, crunchy florets that absorb the mustard and vinegar flavour.
Onions
Add sharpness and sweetness that mellow during cooking and brining.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
Old mustard
Supplies the pungent, sharp flavour that defines the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling vinegar over the hard pickles three times. Repeated hot vinegar pours draw water out and heat the vegetables so they stay crisp while the brine soaks in and preserves them. Hot liquid must reach the vegetables fully for the pickles to keep their texture.

Swap the onion

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

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

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