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English Mixed Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix of tomatoes, cucumbers, cauliflower, beans, celery, peppers, and onions in a spiced vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

English Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the vegetables finely.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Let them stand overnight.

Make the pickle and cook

  1. Combine 6-7 quarts of vinegar with ground cloves, allspice, pepper, turmeric, and mustard seed. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Add the vegetables to the boiling vinegar mixture. Scald until tender and slightly yellow.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavor and a sharp, spicy aroma to the pickling liquid.
Turmeric
Gives the vegetables their yellow color and a warm, earthy flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and reducing their moisture before pickling.

The step that matters

Scald until tender and slightly yellow. Scalding in the boiling vinegar must be stopped once the vegetables soften and take on color. Overcooking turns them mushy, while undercooking leaves them raw and unevenly tinted, since turmeric colors food most evenly when heated in the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

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

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