Skip to main content
Main

Spanish Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix of cabbage, peppers, onions, beans, cauliflower, cucumbers, seasoned with celery seeds, turmeric, mustard, brown sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber 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 ↓

Spanish Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine cabbage, green peppers, small onions, green beans, cauliflower, and sliced cucumbers in a large bowl.

  2. Cover with salt and water and let sit overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the vegetables.

Cook

  1. Add celery seeds, turmeric, mustard, brown sugar, and enough vinegar to cover the vegetables.

  2. Cook slowly for about 2 hours.

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. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 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. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  4. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Green beans + cauliflowertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the bulk of the pickle and a crisp-tender texture after slow cooking.
Vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and adds depth of flavor.
Cucumbers
Add crunch and a mild, fresh flavor that softens only partly during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for about 2 hours. Long, gentle cooking softens the vegetables and lets the vinegar and sugar penetrate them. Heating too hard can turn the vegetables mushy and scorch the sugar on the pot's base.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, green beans, cauliflower, cucumber, celery, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, green beans, cauliflower, cucumber, celery, 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesGreen Pea SoupGreen Pea Soup181 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipes