Skip to main content
Main

Foster's Mustard Pickles

A mixed pickle of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and peppers in a mustard and vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Foster's Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

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

  2. Make a brine with 1 cup of salt and 4 quarts of water; pour over vegetables and let stand overnight.

  3. Heat the mixture to a scald, then drain.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, mix flour, mustard, turmeric, and enough vinegar to make a smooth paste.

  2. Add 1 cup of sugar and 2 quarts of vinegar to the paste; boil until thick.

  3. Add the drained vegetables to the thickened mixture 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 vinegar sauce so it becomes smooth and thick.
Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cucumbers
Form the crisp, bulk body of the pickle.

The step that matters

Make the smooth paste before adding the vinegar. Flour lumps form if the dry ingredients are not blended with a little vinegar first. Mixing to a smooth paste lets the flour disperse evenly so the sauce thickens without clumps when boiled.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, flour, mustard, turmeric. 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 mustard pickles recipes

Mixed 7 See all 151 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipes