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Mustard Pickles

Pickled cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and peppers in a mustard and turmeric brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and peppers in a large bowl.

  2. Make a brine with 4 quarts of water and 1 pint of coarse sea salt and pour it over the vegetables.

  3. Let the vegetables soak for 24 hours.

  4. Heat the mixture just enough to scald it, then drain it in a colander.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix flour, ground mustard, and turmeric with enough cold vinegar to make a smooth paste.

  2. Add 1 cup of sugar and enough vinegar to make 2 quarts total.

  3. Boil the mixture until thickened and smooth, stirring constantly.

Combine and bottle

  1. Add the drained vegetables to the mixture and cook until heated through.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Adds firm, crisp texture that holds up to the thick mustard sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it coats the vegetables.
Ground mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Turmeric powder
Gives the pickles their yellow color and a mild earthy aroma.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cucumbers
Form the main crisp vegetable base that absorbs the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mustard sauce until thickened and smooth. Flour starch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, and stirring constantly keeps it from clumping or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

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

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