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Mustard Pickles

Pickled cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, green peppers, and green tomatoes in a mustard‑flavored brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Cut or grind the cucumbers, onions, cauliflowers, green peppers, and green tomatoes together.

  2. Let the mixture stand in salt water for 1 hour.

  3. Scald the mixture in the same water and drain well.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. In a pot, mix the vinegar, sugar, celery seed, ground mustard, flour, and turmeric.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the drained vegetables and cook for 30 minutes.

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. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it clings to the vegetables.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their yellow color.
Ground mustard
Adds the sharp, pungent flavor that defines mustard pickles.
Green tomatoes
Supplies the bulk of the vegetables and absorbs the sauce's flavor.

The step that matters

Pour the hot mixture over the drained vegetables and cook for 30 minutes. The flour must be fully mixed into the boiling sauce before it is combined with the vegetables, or it can clump. Keeping the sauce hot and cooking it long enough lets the flour thicken it evenly, so the pickles are coated rather than watery or lumpy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, tomato, vinegar, sugar, celery. 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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