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Bottled Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of onions, cucumbers, green tomatoes, carrots, and cauliflower in salted water and vinegar with black or red peppers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Bottled Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop equal quantities of onions, cucumbers, green tomatoes, carrots, and cauliflowers.

  2. Cook the vegetables in salted water until fork-tender but not soft.

Pickle and seal

  1. Heat vinegar with black or red peppers.

  2. While the pickles are hot, layer them alternately in a glass jar.

  3. Pour hot peppered vinegar over the pickles and seal the jar.

  4. Ensure the jar is hot for proper canning.

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

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 main crisp vegetable bulk that holds texture in the jar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, giving the pickles their sour flavor and preserving character.
Cauliflowers
Add firm pieces that keep their shape after cooking and pickling.
Onions
Contribute sharp aroma and savory flavor that mellows during pickling.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables until fork-tender but not soft. Cooking softens the vegetables enough to take up the vinegar, but overcooking breaks down cell walls, leaving a mushy texture that does not stay crisp in the jar.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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