Skip to main content
Main

Dutch Salad Pickle

A pickle made from green tomatoes, green peppers, white onions, and cucumber pickles, seasoned with salt, mustard, flour, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Dutch Salad Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. In a kettle, combine green tomatoes, green peppers, white onions, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour in enough water to prevent sticking and boil for about 5 minutes.

  3. Drain off the water.

Make the dressing

  1. Prepare the dressing by mixing dry mustard, flour, and sugar in a separate pot.

  2. Add vinegar to the mixture and cook until thick.

Combine and cook

  1. Combine the dressing with the boiled vegetables and small cucumber pickles.

  2. Cook all together for 30 minutes.

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. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and absorb the salt and dressing flavors.
Green peppers
Add crisp texture and a mild, fresh bitterness to the pickle.
White onions
Contribute savory depth and aroma that mellows during cooking.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that gives the dressing its characteristic bite.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar and sugar mixture into a smooth, thick dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing until thick. Flour must be fully mixed with the sugar and mustard before the vinegar is added, then cooked long enough that the starch swells and thickens. Lumps or undercooked flour leave a pasty taste and a thin, uneven dressing.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, cabbage, mustard, flour, sugar, 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes