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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, turmeric, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the vegetables

  1. Make a brine with 4 quarts of water and 1 cup of coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour the brine over the vegetables and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Cook the vegetables in fresh water until tender but not soft.

  2. Drain the vegetables again.

  3. Mix 1 cup of flour, 6 tablespoons of ground mustard, and 1 tablespoon of turmeric with enough cold vinegar to make a soft paste.

  4. Add 1½ cups of sugar to the paste.

  5. Combine the paste with 2 quarts of hot vinegar, mixing well with the vegetables.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the mustard paste so it coats the vegetables and clings to them.
Ground mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and carries the sauce.

The step that matters

Making the soft paste. Flour and dry mustard must be blended smoothly with cold vinegar before the hot vinegar is added. Adding hot liquid to dry flour directly causes lumps that will not dissolve, leaving a grainy, unevenly thickened sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, cauliflower, cabbage, flour, mustard, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cauliflower, cabbage, flour, mustard, turmeric. 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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