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
Wash the cucumbers, onions, beans, and cauliflower.
Sprinkle them with 1 teacup of coarse sea salt, then pour 1 gallon of boiling water over them.
Drain the brine.
Scald the brine for two mornings, pouring it back scalding hot each time.
On the next morning, scald the vegetables in clear water.
Make the mustard sauce
Add prepared vinegar to the vegetables.
In a pot, scald 2 quarts of vinegar.
Mix in ½ pound of ground white mustard until smooth.
Add 1½ pounds of sugar to the mixture.
Combine this mixture with the vinegar in the kettle.
Scald again without boiling.
Stir gently to prevent the mustard from sticking.
Pack and serve
Pack the pickles in jars.
Pour the vinegar over them, either hot or cold.
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.
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Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together584 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together687 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together290 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,281 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked 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
What each ingredient does
- Cucumbers
- Firm texture that holds up through brining and pickling into crisp, tangy pieces.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws water out of the vegetables and seasons them before the vinegar is added.
- Prepared vinegar
- Acid that preserves the pickles and gives them their sharp, tangy flavor.
- Sugar
- Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
- Ground white mustard
- Forms the thick yellow sauce and provides the pungent mustard flavor.
The step that matters
Stir gently to prevent the mustard from sticking. Ground mustard is dense and settles and scorches on the bottom of a hot pot, so the sauce can turn lumpy or burnt if not stirred steadily while it heats.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, beans, cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, mustard):
- Lettucefits better
- Broccolifits better
- Horseradishfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, beans, cauliflower, 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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