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 ↓
Mixed Mustard Pickles
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the vegetables
Soak the cucumbers, onions, and cauliflower in salt water overnight, breaking the cauliflower into small pieces.
In the morning, drain the vegetables and cook them until tender in equal parts of vinegar and water.
Make the mustard sauce
Heat 2 quarts of vinegar and water.
Mix the mustard, flour, and turmeric powder with 1 pint of cold vinegar to form a smooth paste.
Stir the paste into the scalding vinegar mixture.
Drain the pickles from the cooking liquid.
Add the pickles to the mustard mixture as soon as it thickens, but do not boil.
Allow the mixture to reach the boiling point.
Jar
Remove from heat and jar while hot.
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.
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Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together584 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together514 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together687 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,279 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked 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
- Form the crisp-textured body of the pickle.
- Onions
- Add savory flavor and bulk to the pickled mixture.
- Cauliflower
- Adds bulk and a firm bite to the pickle mixture.
- Mustard
- Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the sauce.
- Flour
- Thickens the vinegar mixture into a smooth, coating sauce.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the sharp vinegar with sweetness and depth.
The step that matters
Add the pickles without boiling the mustard mixture. Flour thickens the sauce as it heats, and boiling too long or too hard can make it lumpy or scorched, and can soften the vegetables. Adding the drained pickles once the sauce thickens, then heating only to the boiling point, keeps the sauce smooth and the vegetables intact.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cauliflower, sugar, mustard, vinegar, turmeric, flour):
- Horseradishfits better
- Radishfits better
- Broccolifits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, sugar, mustard, vinegar, turmeric, flour. 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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