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Pickles, Etc

A pickled vegetable mixture of celery, carrots, turnip, apples, cucumbers, seasoned with curry powder, mustard flour, white pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pickles, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Pare and slice the carrots and turnip, cutting them into notched stripes with a fluted biscuit cutter.

  2. Pare the apples and cut them into eight pieces lengthwise, removing the cores.

  3. Cut the cucumbers lengthwise into four and then into 1‑inch lengths.

  4. Boil a pan of water with a good quantity of salt.

  5. Add all the vegetables to the boiling water and boil for one minute.

  6. Drain the vegetables immediately and let them drain on a clean cloth for twelve hours.

  7. Place the drained vegetables into a jar.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Make a smooth paste with the curry powder, mustard flour, ground white pepper, and a little vinegar.

  2. Boil the vinegar and stir in the spice paste when boiling.

  3. Pour the spiced vinegar over the pickles and stir to mix well.

Cover and store

  1. Cover the jar with a plate and then with a cloth the next day.

  2. Begin using the pickles after three months; they improve with age.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the crisp, watery bulk that holds its texture in the brine.
Vinegar
Its acidity preserves the vegetables and gives the pickles their sharp flavour.
Curry powder
Supplies the aromatic spice and colour that flavour the pickling liquid.
Mustard flour
Adds pungent, sharp flavour and helps thicken the spice paste.
Apples
Add sweetness and a fresh fruity note that balances the sharp vinegar.
Cucumbers
Contribute crunch and moisture that the brine gradually softens over time.

The step that matters

Boiling the vegetables for one minute. Brief blanching softens the vegetables slightly and helps them absorb the vinegar, while over-boiling makes them mushy and waterlogged, so timing matters.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, turnip, apple, cucumber, mustard, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, turnip, apple, cucumber, mustard, 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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