Skip to main content
Main

Mustard Mixed Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, beans, peppers, and cauliflower, seasoned with salt, vinegar, flour, sugar, mustard, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mustard Mixed Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, green tomatoes, onions, green beans, green peppers, and cauliflower in a bowl.

  2. Soak the chopped vegetables overnight in a brine made of 1 pint of salt and 1 gallon of water.

  3. The next morning, drain the vegetables for about 1 hour.

  4. Scald the drained vegetables in a mixture of ⅓ cup vinegar and ⅔ cup water.

  5. Pour off the vinegar mixture and prepare the dressing.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine flour, sugar, dry mustard, and turmeric powder. Cook until thickened.

Combine and seal

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the hot vegetables.

  2. Pack the mixture into jars and seal.

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. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Green beans + cauliflowertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cucumber + green beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + green beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together113 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

Cucumbers
Provide the main crunchy vegetable bulk of the pickle.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and absorbs the dressing and brine flavour.
Flour
Thickens the mustard dressing so it coats the vegetables.
Dry mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Turmeric powder
Gives the dressing its yellow colour and mild earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until thickened. Flour thickens only when heated long enough for its starch to swell in the liquid. Undercooked dressing stays thin and runs off the vegetables, while the hot dressing must be poured over hot vegetables so it blends and coats evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, green beans, pepper, cauliflower, vinegar, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, green beans, pepper, cauliflower, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Pea SoupGreen Pea Soup181 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes