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Mustard Pickee

A pickled cucumber dish flavored with mustard, ginger, turmeric, pepper, and olive oil, finished with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mustard Pickee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Combine chopped cucumbers and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Let sit for 24 hours.

  3. Press out the salt water.

  4. Boil cucumbers in fresh water until very tender.

  5. Drain well.

Prepare the onions

  1. Slice the onions.

  2. Boil onions until tender.

Combine and cook

  1. Mix onions with the drained cucumbers.

  2. Add mustard, ginger, turmeric, pepper, and olive oil to the cucumber mixture.

  3. Cover with vinegar.

  4. Bring to a boil for 2 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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and, after salting and softening, provide its tender texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and body, softening as they boil into the mixture.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavour.
Mustard
Contributes the pungent, sharp flavour that defines this mustard pickle.
Olive oil
Adds fat, giving the pickle a richer mouthfeel and helping carry the spice flavours.

The step that matters

Press out the salt water. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers. If the salt water is not pressed out thoroughly, the pickle will taste overly salty and the cucumbers may stay watery, weakening the final texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, mustard, ginger, turmeric, pepper, olive, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, mustard, ginger, turmeric, pepper, olive, vinegar. 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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