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Mixed Pickles

A preserved vegetable mixture of cucumbers, peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, horseradish, beans, tomatoes, seasoned with mustard seeds, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, green peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, horseradish, green beans, and green tomatoes in a large bowl.

  2. Soak the mixture in a strong brine for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the mixture for 3 hours.

Season and pickle

  1. Sprinkle in black mustard seeds, then white mustard seeds, then black ground pepper.

  2. Add enough vinegar to cover the mixture.

  3. Bring to a boil, adding a little alum.

  4. Drain again.

  5. Let cool.

  6. Mix in ground mustard.

  7. Cover with cider vinegar.

  8. Add turmeric to achieve desired color.

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. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickle.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and bulk that holds up to brining and boiling.
Onions
Add sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the vinegar.
Black mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during pickling.
Green tomatoes
Add tart acidity and firm body to the mix.
Ground mustard
Adds pungency and helps thicken the pickling liquid's flavour.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil with alum. Alum firms the vegetables' cell walls so they stay crisp rather than turning soft. Boiling only briefly keeps them tender-crisp, while overcooking would cause them to go limp and mushy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cauliflower, cabbage, horseradish, green beans, tomato. 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 pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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