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Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of green peppers, cauliflower, onions, and cucumbers in a seasoned vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

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

  2. In the morning, drain the vegetables and place them in a kettle.

  3. Add enough vinegar to cover the vegetables.

Make the pickle

  1. Mix the ground mustard and turmeric powder with enough vinegar to make a paste.

  2. Add the mustard paste, white mustard seed, cloves, allspice, and sugar to the kettle.

  3. Boil for five minutes, no longer.

Cook the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salt water until tender before mixing with the other vegetables.

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 + 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground mustard
Contributes a pungent, sharp mustard flavour that defines the pickle.
Turmeric powder
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and a mild earthy aroma.
Cauliflower
Forms a firm, bulky vegetable base that soaks up the spiced vinegar.
Cucumbers
Adds a firm vegetable body that absorbs the brine and pickling flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for five minutes, no longer. Extended boiling softens the vegetables until they turn mushy and dulls the mustard and spice flavours. A short, timed boil keeps the pieces intact while the vinegar and spices penetrate.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cauliflower, cucumber, vinegar, mustard, turmeric, clove. 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 mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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