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Dutch Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, peppers, and spices in a mustard-flour vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Dutch Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop or run all vegetables through a food chopper.

  2. Cover chopped vegetables with ½ cup salt and 1 quart water.

  3. Hang in a bag and let drain.

Make the dressing and finish

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard and flour with vinegar.

  2. Cook the mustard, flour, and vinegar mixture for about 15 minutes.

  3. Add the drained vegetables and cook for an additional 10 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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp vegetable bulk of the pickle.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle's character.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture so it coats the vegetables.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives tang.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Cook the mustard, flour, and vinegar mixture for about 15 minutes. Flour must be cooked long enough to fully thicken the liquid and lose its raw starchy taste. Stirring helps prevent lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, cauliflower, cabbage, pepper, mustard, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cauliflower, cabbage, pepper, mustard, turmeric. 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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