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Mixed Pickles

A pickled assortment of cauliflower, onions, peppers, cucumbers, nasturtiums, and green beans in a vinegar, sugar, salt, and mustard brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scald the cauliflower, onions, peppers, cucumbers, nasturtiums, and green beans in salt water until tender.

  2. Drain the vegetables until dry and pack them into wide-mouthed bottles.

Make the brine and seal

  1. In a pot, boil the cider vinegar with sugar, coarse sea salt, and mustard.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the packed vegetables and seal the bottles carefully.

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 + green beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + green beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together95 recipes

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

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 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

Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour to the brine.
Cauliflower heads
Forms the firm, crisp bulk of the pickle.

The step that matters

Drain the vegetables until dry. Surface water left on the scalded vegetables dilutes the hot vinegar brine, weakening its acidity and preservative effect and making the pickle more likely to spoil.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, pepper, cucumber, green beans, cider, vinegar, sugar. 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

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