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Mustard Pickle

A pickle made with mustard, oil, vinegar, sugar, spices, and various vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 large boxes of mustard with ⅓ pint of salad oil and enough vinegar to make a smooth paste.

  2. Stir in 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 cup of grated horseradish, 1 cup of ground ginger, ½ cup of white mustard seed, ½ cup of celery seed, ½ ounce of turmeric, and 1 tablespoon each of ground cloves, allspice, and cayenne pepper.

Cook and add vegetables

  1. Transfer the mixture to a stone jar and fill it with good cider vinegar until two-thirds full.

  2. Place the jar in a vessel of cold water over heat and boil for 2 to 3 hours, stirring occasionally.

  3. After boiling, fill the jar with parboiled vegetables: cut-up white cabbage, tender beans, cauliflower, small onions, and sliced cucumbers.

  4. Allow the vegetables to drain well before adding them to the jar.

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. Mustard + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle and forms the base paste.
Salad oil
Adds fat that helps carry flavour and keeps the mustard paste smooth.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickle and sharpens its flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds a sharp, crunchy seed flavour that contributes to the pickle's bite.
Cauliflower
Serves as the main vegetable, absorbing the spiced vinegar brine as it cooks.

The step that matters

Draining the vegetables well. Excess water left on parboiled vegetables dilutes the vinegar and spiced paste, weakening the preserving acidity and loosening the pickle's texture.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, vinegar, sugar, horseradish, ginger, turmeric, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, sugar, horseradish, ginger, turmeric, clove. 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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