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Sliced Mustard Pickles

A pickle made with cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, mustard, flour, sugar, turmeric, vinegar, and celery seed.

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 ↓

Sliced Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cucumbers, onions, and cauliflower in cold brine overnight.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the mustard, flour, sugar, and turmeric with a little vinegar until smooth.

  2. Add the vinegar to the mixture and heat until it thickens into a paste.

  3. Stir in the celery seed and pour the hot paste over the pickles.

Jar

  1. Pack the pickles into jars and seal them.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ground yellow mustard
Provides the main pungent flavor and the thick body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce into a smooth paste as it heats.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickles.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Turmeric
Gives the sauce its yellow color and a mild, earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Heating the mustard paste. Flour must be fully mixed smooth before heating and the paste kept moving, or it will lump or scorch. Heat thickens the mixture as the flour starches swell, so it should be stirred until it reaches a smooth, thick paste.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, mustard, flour, sugar, turmeric, 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.

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