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English Mixed Mustard Pickles

A pickled mixture of onions, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, cauliflower, beans, and spices in vinegar and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

English Mixed Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine onions, green tomatoes, green peppers, red peppers, cucumbers, cauliflowers, beans, and coarse sea salt in a large bowl.

  2. Let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the mixture well.

Make the pickle

  1. Place mace, black peppers, cloves, celery seed, and mustard seed in a muslin bag and add to the mixture.

  2. Cover with vinegar and add brown sugar.

  3. Heat on the stove until nearly boiling.

  4. Mix ground mustard and turmeric with cold vinegar until smooth. Add to the pot.

  5. Stir and boil for 10 to 15 minutes.

  6. Remove the spice bag and bottle the pickles.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle's character.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Ground mustard
Thickens the brine and adds pungent mustard flavor.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour.
Green tomatoes
Provide bulk and a firm texture that holds up in the pickle.

The step that matters

Mixing the ground mustard and turmeric smooth. If the ground mustard and turmeric are added as dry lumps, they stay gritty and unevenly coloured. Blending them first into cold vinegar disperses the powders so they dissolve and thicken evenly when heated.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, tomato, pepper, cucumber, cauliflower, beans, clove):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, tomato, pepper, cucumber, cauliflower, beans, 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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