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English Mustard Pickle

A pickle made with English mustard, vinegar, and sugar, containing cauliflower, green beans, cucumbers, onions, horseradish, and peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

English Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil cauliflower, green beans, cucumbers, and onions separately in salt water until tender but not soft.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a porcelain kettle, combine mustard, vinegar, and sugar; bring to a boil.

  2. Add boiled vegetables and let them boil for a few minutes.

  3. Skim out the vegetables.

Pack and seal

  1. Pour the mustard‑vinegar mixture over them.

  2. Transfer to air‑tight jars.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 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

Coleman's imported english mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle.
Vinegar
Acidifies the sauce, sharpening flavour and helping preserve the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and sharpness of the mustard and vinegar.
White cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp bulk of the pickle and absorbs the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the vegetables until tender but not soft. Vegetables cooked too long turn mushy and lose their crisp bite, and they absorb the acidic sauce unevenly. Cooking them just until tender keeps their texture firm through the pickling.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, sugar, cauliflower, green beans, cucumber, horseradish. 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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