Skip to main content
Main

Mixed Pickles

A pickled mix of tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, cabbage, and cauliflower in a mustard‑turmeric‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice tomatoes and peppers.

  2. Peel and slice onions and cucumbers.

  3. Chop cabbage.

  4. Separate cauliflower.

  5. Prepare a brine with ½ cup salt in 5 quarts of water. Soak the vegetables for 24 hours.

  6. Drain the vegetables thoroughly.

  7. Steam until tender.

Make the dressing

  1. Mix mustard, turmeric, sugar, and flour. Add enough water to make a paste.

  2. Combine the paste with boiling vinegar and 1 pint of water. Cook until very thick.

Combine and jar

  1. Add the vegetables to the thickened mixture. Mix well.

  2. Pack into jars. Seal.

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 + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Green tomatoes
Provide bulk and a tart, firm body to the pickle.
Red tomatoes
Add bulk, colour and a softer texture once cooked.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and fresh flavour that holds through cooking.
Flour
Thickens the mustard paste so the sauce becomes very thick and clings to the vegetables.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves and flavours the pickle.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour to the thick sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the paste until very thick. Flour thickens only when it is heated enough to gelatinise its starch. Cooking it fully removes raw flour taste and gives the sauce body; undercooked paste stays thin and tastes floury.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cauliflower, pepper, cabbage, mustard, turmeric, 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 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes