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Mustard Pickle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, green tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, cayenne pepper, nasturtiums, radishes, and a sprinkle of coarse sea salt in a bowl. Cover and let sit overnight.

Make the pickles

  1. In the morning, drain the pickles and scald them in vinegar.

  2. In a separate bowl, dissolve the flour and mustard in a little cold water. Bring the vinegar to a boil, then stir in the flour and mustard mixture.

  3. Add the brown sugar and the drained pickles to the boiling vinegar mixture.

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 + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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, fresh body of the pickle after brining.
Green tomatoes
Add firm texture and a tart flavor that holds up to pickling.
Cauliflower
Adds firm, crunchy pieces that absorb the pickling liquid.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture so it clings to the vegetables.
Colman's mustard
Gives the pickling liquid its sharp mustard flavor and color.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and mustard into the boiling vinegar. Flour mixed into hot liquid can clump, so it must be fully dissolved in cold water first. Adding it to boiling vinegar and stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, radish, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, radish, vinegar, 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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