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Mustaed Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Mustaed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Salt the vegetables and let them sit for 24 hours.

  2. Scald each vegetable separately with vinegar and discard the vinegar.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. Mix the ground mustard with a little vinegar until smooth.

  2. Pour 2 quarts of boiling vinegar over the mustard mixture.

Pack and seal

  1. Thoroughly mix the pickles and pack them tightly into bottles.

  2. Fill the bottles with the mustard and vinegar mixture and seal.

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. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 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

Cucumbers
Provide the main crunchy body of the pickle after salting and scalding.
Silver-skinned onions
Add sweetness and a firm texture that holds up in the brine.
French beans
Contribute crisp texture and absorb the mustard and vinegar flavour.
Cauliflowers
Add bulk and a firm, absorbent texture to the pickle.
Ground mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle and thickens the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling vinegar over the mustard mixture. Mustard must be smoothed fully before the boiling vinegar is added; lumps stay raw, and the sauce can curdle or turn bitter if the mustard is not properly dispersed and heated evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, beans, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, 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.

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