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Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, small pickles, and mangoes in a mustard-sugar-flour-turmeric dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, small pickles, and mangoes in weak salt water for 24 hours.

  2. Wash the vegetables in clean water and scald them in weak vinegar.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Make the dressing and cook

  1. Prepare the dressing by mixing mustard, sugar, flour, and turmeric.

  2. Heat the dressing until hot, then add the vegetables and cook until it begins to thicken.

Can

  1. Can and seal the mixture for preservation.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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 dressing so it coats the vegetables as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
White vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
Colman's mustard
Adds pungent flavour to the dressing.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their yellow colour and warm aroma.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing until it begins to thicken. Flour thickens only when heated enough to swell its starch, but overheating can scorch the dressing or make it lumpy. Stir steadily while the vegetables are added and cooked.

Swap the mango

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cauliflower, mustard, sugar, flour, turmeric. 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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