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Dessert

Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix dressed with a mustard‑sugar‑flour vinaigrette.

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 ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine the green peppers, small onions, small cucumbers, pickled cauliflowers, and sliced cucumbers in a large container.

  2. Pour a brine made of 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt dissolved in 1 quart of water over the vegetables until covered. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain off the brine.

Make the dressing

  1. Boil together 1 gallon of vinegar, 6 tablespoons of mustard, 1.5 cups of brown sugar, ½ cup of flour, ½ ounce of turmeric, and ½ ounce of curry powder for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the dressing over the pickles. If the dressing is not thick like sour cream when cold, add more flour and boil again.

Store

  1. Store the pickles in crocks covered tightly with thick paper.

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

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the dressing so it clings to the vegetables when cold.
Vinegar
Provides the acidic base that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour that carries through the dressing.
Turmeric
Gives the dressing its characteristic yellow colour.

The step that matters

Thickening the dressing. Flour thickens only as its starch gelatinises in boiling liquid and sets as it cools. If the dressing stays thin when cold, boiling it again with more flour is needed so the pickles are properly coated.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cucumber, cauliflower, vinegar, mustard, sugar, 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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