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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture dressed with a mustard, sugar, and spice vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 the vegetables

  1. Combine the green peppers, small onions, small cucumbers, pickled cauliflowers, and sliced cucumbers in a large container.

  2. Prepare a brine with 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt per quart of water, and pour it over the vegetables until fully covered.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours, then drain off the brine.

Make the dressing

  1. In a pot, mix 1 gallon of vinegar, 6 tablespoons of mustard, 1.5 cups of brown sugar, ½ cup of flour, ½ ounce of turmeric, and ½ ounce of curry powder.

  2. Boil the dressing for 5 minutes until thickened to the consistency of thick sour cream; add more flour if needed.

Pack and store

  1. Pour the dressing over the pickles and store in crocks covered tightly with thick paper.

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

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and sharpens the flavour of the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the boiled dressing so it clings to the vegetables.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and mustard.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour and helps emulsify the thick dressing.
Turmeric
Gives the dressing its yellow colour and earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the dressing. Flour thickens only when it is fully heated in liquid, and boiling it too briefly leaves the dressing thin and floury-tasting. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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