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Mustard Pickles

Pickles made with cauliflower, onions, mustard, turmeric, and green peppers, simmered in a mustard‑turmeric paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 514 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the cauliflower and onions briefly, then chop them.

  2. Sprinkle 1 cup of coarse sea salt over the chopped vegetables.

  3. Pour boiling water over the vegetables and drain off the next morning.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the ground mustard and turmeric powder with a little vinegar.

  2. Combine the flour with water to make a paste.

  3. Add the mustard mixture and remaining vinegar to the flour paste, then boil while stirring well.

Finish

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines mustard pickles.
Turmeric powder
Gives the pickles their bright yellow colour and a warm, earthy aroma.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a smooth, coating sauce.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickles their tang.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp bulk of the pickle that holds up to the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while stirring well. Flour thickens only when it is brought to a boil and stirred constantly; otherwise it can clump or stay raw-tasting, leaving the sauce lumpy and thin.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cauliflower, mustard, turmeric, pepper, sugar, 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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