Skip to main content
Main

Mustard Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard and a thickened vinegar-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the tomatoes in water for 2-3 minutes, being careful not to overcook.

  2. Pour boiling salt water over the vegetables and let them stand overnight.

Pickle

  1. Afterward, pour hot vinegar over the mixture and let it sit for 2-3 days until pickled.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and mustard well, then wet with a little cold vinegar.

  2. Heat the vinegar and sugar together until boiling.

  3. Add the flour and mustard mixture to the boiling vinegar and stir until thickened.

  4. Pour the thickened mixture over the pickled vegetables.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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

Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it coats the pickled vegetables.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, firm body of the pickle.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and mustard mixture to the boiling vinegar. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid and stirred, so lumps can form if it is added unevenly. Mixing it smoothly with cold vinegar first helps it disperse before it gelatinizes into a uniform sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipes