Name: Mixed Pickles
Ingredients: young cucumbers; cauliflower; peppers; string beans; onions; juniper berries; mustard flour; vinegar; red pepper

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 ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare young cucumbers, cauliflower, peppers, string beans, and onions.
Place them in glass jars with a few juniper berries.
Dilute mustard flour with vinegar and season with a pinch of red pepper.
Pour the mixture over the vegetables to cover them.
Seal the jar tightly.

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.

Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together687 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

Swap the onion

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

Lettucefits better
Broccolifits better
Horseradishfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, beans, mustard, flour, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.