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Mixed Pickles

A preserved mixture of pickles, onions, cauliflower, and green peppers in a vinegar and sugar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Mix the small and large onions, cauliflower, green peppers, and both types of pickles.

  2. Scald the mixture in salt water, then drain.

Make the dressing

  1. Use 1 pint of vinegar to make a paste with the flour, mustard, and turmeric.

  2. Scald 3 pints of vinegar, add the sugar and the paste, stirring briskly.

Combine and can

  1. Add the vegetables, scald again, and then can 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. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp flavor that balances the sweetness and acidity of the vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickling liquid its yellow color and a mild, earthy aroma.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the brine and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the paste into the hot vinegar. Flour mixed with mustard and turmeric can clump if added to hot liquid without first being smoothed into a paste with cold vinegar. Stirring briskly while adding it spreads the starch evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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