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Mustard Pickle

A pickled cucumber and vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, pepper, and allspice.

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 ↓

Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut cucumbers in half lengthwise and combine with small onions, cabbage, and cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Pack the mixture tightly into jars, turn them upside down, and drain well.

Make the brine and pack

  1. In a pot, boil 1 gallon of vinegar, 6 tablespoons of salt, and 8 tablespoons of mustard mixed with a little cold vinegar for 1 minute.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons each of pepper and allspice to the mixture.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

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. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, watery bulk that the salt draws moisture from.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and making them less watery.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor to the hot vinegar mixture.
Cabbage
Adds crunchy texture and bulk that holds up to brining.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables well before packing. Salting draws water out of the vegetables, but any water left inside dilutes the hot vinegar brine and weakens its preserving acidity and flavor. Thorough draining keeps the brine strong and the pickles crisp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cabbage, cauliflower, vinegar, mustard, pepper, allspice. 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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