Skip to main content
Main

Premium Mustard Pickle

A pickle made with cucumbers, gherkins, or green tomatoes, vinegar, mustard seed, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Premium Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the cucumbers, gherkins, or green tomatoes in strong salt water for 3 days.

  2. Transfer them to fresh cold water for 1–2 days.

  3. Scald the vegetables in plain vinegar and let them cool.

Make and pour the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine the vinegar, white mustard seed, turmeric, sliced ginger, shredded horseradish, mustard, brown sugar, sweet oil, celery seed, black pepper, cloves, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the cooled 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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers, gherkins, or green tomatoes
Form the main body of the pickle, becoming firm and crisp after the salt soak.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp heat and a characteristic mustard flavor to the brine.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow color and a mild, earthy aroma.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Mustard
Contributes sharpness and depth of flavor to the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Scalding the vegetables in vinegar. Scalding softens the vegetables enough to absorb the spiced brine, but overcooking makes them mushy. Letting them cool before pouring the hot mixture helps keep their texture firm.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, mustard, turmeric, horseradish, sugar, celery. 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 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes