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Mustard Dressing

A vinegar-based dressing with mustard and sugar, used for pickling cucumbers, cauliflower, or onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mustard Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine mustard and a little vinegar with sugar until smooth.

  2. Heat the 3 pints of vinegar to a boiling point.

  3. Stir in the mustard mixture until smooth.

Pickle and store

  1. Use for pickling small cucumbers, cauliflower, or onions cut into small pieces.

  2. When cool, pour dressing over the pickles and seal in bottles or jars.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang and helps preserve the pickles.
Mustard
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour that balances the sweetness and acidity.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard, adding sweetness to taste.

The step that matters

Smoothing the mustard before adding it to the hot vinegar. Dry mustard clumps easily when stirred into liquid. Mixing it first with a little vinegar and sugar makes a smooth paste that blends evenly into the hot vinegar, so the dressing stays free of lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, flour, sugar. 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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