Skip to main content
Preserve

Chopped Pickle

A pickle of chopped cauliflower, green tomatoes, cucumbers, mangoes, celery and onions cooked in vinegar with brown sugar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chopped Pickle

Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber 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 ↓

Chopped Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers, mangoes, and celery.

  2. Combine all chopped ingredients with onions in a large pot.

Cook

  1. Add apple vinegar and brown sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Mix turmeric, ground mustard, and flour into a paste. Add the paste to the pot.

  4. Boil for an additional 5 minutes or until the mixture thickens like cream.

Can

  1. Can the pickle while hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mango + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Tomato + mangotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the liquid into a creamy texture when the paste is boiled.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Apple vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the chopped vegetables and fruit.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour.

The step that matters

Boil until the mixture thickens like cream. The flour paste needs to boil long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the liquid. Stopping too early leaves the pickle thin, while boiling too long can scorch it on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, tomato, cucumber, mango, celery, onion, 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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes