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Mixed Pickle

A pickled mixture of green tomatoes, cucumbers, string beans, onions, cauliflower, peppers, spices, sugar, 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 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the tomatoes and cucumbers overnight, then drain them the next morning.

  2. Boil the string beans and cauliflower until soft.

Pickle

  1. Mix all ingredients together, cover with vinegar, bring to a boil, and seal.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp body of the pickle, which salting firms up before the vinegar is added.
Green tomatoes
Add bulk and tartness, and salting draws out water so the pickle stays firmer.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes and cucumbers overnight. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis. Draining them well removes that liquid, so the finished pickle stays crisp rather than watery and diluting the vinegar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, beans, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, beans, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, 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.

More mixed pickle recipes

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