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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, cauliflower, and peppers flavored with mustard, turmeric, and celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Brine the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, tomatoes, cauliflower, and peppers in a large bowl.

  2. Make a brine with water and salt, cover the vegetables, and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Heat the brine until scalding hot, then drain the vegetables thoroughly.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, mustard, and turmeric with enough cold vinegar to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add sugar, celery seed, and enough vinegar to make 2 quarts total.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens, stirring constantly.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the vegetables and cook until heated through.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce into a smooth, cohesive coating for the vegetables.
Ground mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Turmeric
Adds the yellow color and a mild earthy aroma to the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cauliflower
Holds its firm texture through brining and cooking, adding crunch to the pickle.

The step that matters

Boil the mustard sauce until it thickens. Flour thickens only when it reaches a boil and is stirred constantly; stopping early leaves the sauce thin and raw-tasting, and scorching can occur if it sits unstirred on the heat.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, flour, mustard, turmeric, sugar. 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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