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Yellow Pickle

A pickle of green tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, onions, cucumbers, and other vegetables in a mustard‑flour‑turmeric vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber 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 ↓

Yellow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the green tomatoes and peppers, removing any imperfections and seeds.

  2. Soak the tomatoes and peppers in strong brine for 1 hour, then drain and cook in fresh hot water until tender.

  3. In separate pots, cook the cauliflowers broken into small pieces and the peeled onions until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce and simmer

  1. In a large kettle, combine the vinegar, then mix the mustard, flour, and turmeric into a smooth paste with a little vinegar and stir into the rest of the vinegar.

  2. Bring the vinegar mixture to a boil, then add all the cooked ingredients and simmer for at least 1 hour, stirring often.

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spice flavours during simmering.
Cauliflowers
Add firm pieces that hold their shape and texture through the long simmer.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp, tangy flavour.
Dry mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that complements the vinegar and vegetables.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its distinctive yellow colour and a mild, earthy aroma.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture so the sauce clings to the vegetables.

The step that matters

Make the mustard paste smooth before stirring it in. Dry mustard, flour and turmeric clump easily if added dry. Mixing them into a smooth paste with a little vinegar first lets them disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps and colours the pickle uniformly.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits about as well
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

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

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