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Mixed Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix of cauliflower, string beans, onions, peppers, and tomatoes in cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Break the cauliflower into florets and trim the string beans and onions.

  2. Chop the red pepper, green peppers, and yellow tomatoes into small pieces.

  3. Scald the vegetables in a mixture of salt and water.

Pickle

  1. Let the vegetables sit for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the vegetables and place them in a jar or pan.

  3. Pour boiling cider vinegar over the vegetables.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Bottle

  1. Transfer the cooled mixture to glass bottles.

  2. Seal the bottles tightly.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the pickle and keeps a firm, crisp bite after brining.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
String beans
Add crisp texture and absorb the brine and vinegar flavor.

The step that matters

Scald the vegetables in salt water. Scalding briefly softens the vegetables just enough to take up brine and flavor while keeping them crisp. Overcooking turns them soft and mushy, which weakens the final texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, beans, pepper, tomato, cider, vinegar. 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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