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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber 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. Use small onions raw.

  2. Cook cauliflower and cucumbers in salt water until tender.

  3. Drain the cooked vegetables thoroughly.

Make the pickles

  1. Heat all vegetables together in a sauce made of brown sugar, vinegar, and mustard.

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

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Small onions
Hold their shape and add crisp texture and mild sharpness to the pickles.
Cauliflower
Provides firm, tender pieces that soak up the sauce's flavor.
Small cucumbers
Contribute firm texture and a fresh, crisp bite to the finished pickles.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the pickling sauce its tang and sourness.
Mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor that defines the character of the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the cooked vegetables thoroughly. Excess cooking water dilutes the vinegar sauce, making it weaker in flavor and acidity and the pickles watery.

Swap the onion

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

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

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