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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, turmeric, and sugar, preserved in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Combine the sliced tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, celery, and optional green peppers in a large bowl. Mix with 1 cup of coarse sea salt. Let stand overnight.

  2. Drain the mixture carefully. Scald and drain again.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 1½ pounds of brown sugar, ½ cup of sifted flour, 1 ounce of ground turmeric, and ½ pound of ground mustard with 1 cup of vinegar to form a paste.

  2. Pour 3 quarts of vinegar into a kettle. Heat until hot. Stir in the paste until well blended. Boil for 5 minutes.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the drained vegetables. Cook gently until the liquid is rich and creamy. Remove from heat. Seal in jars.

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. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spice flavor.
Button onions
Add savory sweetness and a firm bite that holds up during cooking.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and soaks up the thick mustard sauce.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it becomes rich and creamy rather than watery.
Ground mustard
Supplies the sharp mustard flavor that defines the pickle.

The step that matters

Make the paste smooth before adding it to the hot vinegar. Dry flour and mustard clump easily when mixed into liquid. Mixing them first with a little vinegar into a smooth paste lets them disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, cauliflower, celery, 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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