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Mustard Pickles

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, green tomatoes, cauliflower, and onions flavored with vinegar, sugar, flour, mustard, and alum.

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 ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cover equal quantities of small cucumbers, sliced green tomatoes, cauliflowers, and small button onions with brine and leave for 24 hours.

  2. Pour off the brine and scald it.

  3. Dissolve a bit of alum in the hot brine and pour it over the pickles.

  4. When cold, drain the pickles thoroughly.

Make the mustard sauce and finish

  1. Prepare 1 quart of vinegar.

  2. Mix 1 cup of brown sugar, ½ cup of flour, and ¼ pound of ground mustard with the vinegar.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling vinegar until smooth.

  4. Pour the mixture over the pickles.

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. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Small cucumbers
Their firm flesh makes up the crisp body of the pickles.
Cauliflowers
Their florets hold their shape and crunch through the pickling and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it clings to the pickles instead of running off.
Ground mustard
Gives the sauce its sharp, pungent flavour and colour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Stirring the mixture into the boiling vinegar until smooth. Flour and mustard mixed into hot liquid can clump if added without stirring. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens evenly and stays smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, nutmeg, 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.

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