Skip to main content
Side

Higdon Pickles

Pickled green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers with mustard, cloves, sugar, turmeric, celery seed, vinegar, ground mustard, and sweet oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Higdon Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and green peppers finely.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and drain dry.

Make the pickle

  1. Add white mustard seed, whole cloves, sugar, turmeric, and celery seed.

  2. Boil vinegar and sugar together, then let cool.

  3. Pour the cooled mixture over the vegetables and mix in ground mustard and sweet oil.

  4. Pack into glass jars.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Clove + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,876 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Turmeric + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the pickle and provide its tart, fresh-vegetable body.
Onions
Add sharp, savory flavor and aromatic depth to the pickle.
White mustard seed
Supplies pungent, sharp mustard flavor that carries through the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, providing the tang that defines the pickle and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Drain the salted vegetables dry. Salt draws water out of chopped vegetables. Draining them well before adding vinegar and sugar keeps the pickle from becoming watery and helps it stay crisp and well set.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, mustard, clove, sugar, turmeric, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, mustard, clove, sugar, turmeric, 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.

You might also like

Onion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipesEggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipes