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Mustard Pickles

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mustard base

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard with salad oil and a little vinegar until smooth. Add cinnamon, white pepper, cayenne pepper, horseradish, ginger, and celery seed.

  2. Stir in brown sugar.

Cook and pack

  1. Transfer to a stone jar filled two-thirds with vinegar.

  2. Place the jar in a vessel of cold water over heat and boil for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally.

  3. After boiling, add white mustard seed and turmeric.

  4. Fill the jar with cut cabbage, beans, corn, onions, and cucumbers.

  5. Add more vegetables as needed.

Store

  1. Store the pickle for 1-2 years.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Horseradish + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard
Forms the main body and sharp flavour of the pickle.
Salad oil
Adds fat that helps carry spice flavour and smooth the mustard paste.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of mustard and vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its taste.
White mustard seed
Adds texture and a mild pungent bite to the finished pickle.
Cabbage
Supplies the main vegetable bulk that soaks up the mustard dressing.

The step that matters

Boiling the jar in water over heat. Gentle, prolonged heating lets the mustard base blend and mellow with the vinegar. Stirring keeps the mustard from settling and scorching on the bottom.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, vinegar, cinnamon, pepper, horseradish, ginger, celery):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, cinnamon, pepper, horseradish, ginger, 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.

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