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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, turmeric, and sugar.

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

  1. Clean and slice the cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, celery, peppers, and green tomatoes.

  2. Soak the vegetables in brine for 24 hours, then drain.

Make and jar the pickles

  1. In a pot, mix the vinegar, sugar, dry mustard, flour, and turmeric, then boil the mixture until thick, then add the drained pickles.

  2. Seal the pickles in jars while hot.

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. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the main crunchy body of the pickle mix.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
Dry mustard
Adds the pungent mustard flavor that defines the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture so it clings to the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity with sweetness.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their bright yellow color.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until thick before adding the pickles. Flour thickens only when it is fully heated, and dry mustard and flour can clump if added unevenly. Cooking the sauce until thick first gives a smooth coating rather than a lumpy or runny one.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, celery, pepper, tomato, vinegar, 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.

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