Skip to main content
Main

Mustaed Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Mustaed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, celery, and red peppers in a brine made of 1 cup salt and 1 gallon water for 24 hours.

  2. Scald the vegetables in the same brine until tender, then drain thoroughly.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a pot, combine 12 tablespoons French mustard, 2 cups flour moistened with vinegar, and 4 quarts vinegar. Stir over heat until smooth.

Combine and can

  1. Add the pickles and can.

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

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

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

French mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a smooth, cling-style sauce.
Vinegar
Acidifies the sauce, providing tang and preserving the vegetables.
Cauliflower
Adds firm, crisp texture that holds up to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until smooth. Flour lumps form if it is added dry to hot liquid; moistening it with vinegar first and stirring over heat lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

More mustard pickles recipes

Mixed 7 See all 151 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipes