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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with vinegar, brown sugar, ground mustard, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scald the small onions and cauliflower in salt water.

  2. Sprinkle salt on the sliced green tomatoes and let them sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, strain off the juice from the tomatoes.

  4. Combine the small pickles and nasturtiums in a jar with the tomatoes.

  5. Pour enough vinegar over the vegetables to cover them.

Make the mustard syrup

  1. Measure the vinegar and pour it off into a pot.

  2. For each quart of vinegar, add 1-2 cups of brown sugar, ¼ pound of ground mustard, and 1 tablespoon of flour.

  3. Mix the flour and mustard smoothly with cold vinegar.

  4. Pour the mixture into the hot vinegar.

  5. Once the flour is cooked, pour the mixture hot over 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. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Tomato + cherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 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
Supply the bulk of the pickle and, after salting, release juice that is drained off before pickling.
Ground mustard
Gives the pickling liquid its sharp, pungent mustard flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Flour
Thickens the hot vinegar mixture so it coats the vegetables rather than running off.
Vinegar
Acidic base that preserves the vegetables and carries the mustard and sugar flavours.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and mustard smoothly with cold vinegar before adding it to the hot vinegar. Flour and ground mustard clump when added dry or to hot liquid. Blending them into cold vinegar first keeps the particles separate, so the mixture thickens evenly once heated and cooked through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, tomato, cherry, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, tomato, cherry, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard. 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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