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Mustard Pickle

A pickled cucumber and onion relish flavored with mustard, turmeric, curry powder, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,102 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak cucumbers and onions in pickle overnight.

  2. Place them in jars.

Make the sauce and pack

  1. In a pot, mix vinegar, sugar, turmeric, curry powder, flour, salt, and red pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture, stirring continuously until smooth.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles in jars and seal tightly.

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 + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so the sauce becomes smooth and clings to the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spiced flavour and aroma of the pickle.
Turmeric
Adds a golden colour and earthy, mustard-like flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture, stirring continuously until smooth. Flour settles and clumps on the bottom of a hot pot if left unstirred, and it can scorch. Constant stirring keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cauliflowerfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, turmeric, flour, pepper. 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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