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Mustard Pickles

Pickled cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, celery, and green peppers in a mustard and sugar vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, celery, and green peppers overnight in a weak brine made of equal parts vinegar and water.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours, then scald in the brine and drain thoroughly.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine brown sugar, flour, turmeric, mustard, and vinegar.

  2. Scald the mixture for 5 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

Combine

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles while still hot.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the vegetables.
Mustard
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their characteristic yellow colour and earthy aroma.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Scalding the sauce while stirring. Flour-thickened sugar mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the pot, and constant stirring prevents burning and lumps so the sauce stays smooth and even.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, celery, pepper, vinegar, 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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