Name: To Pickle Plums Like Olives
Ingredients: 1 cup vinegar; 2 teaspoons mustard seed; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; green plums

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Pickle Plums Like Olives

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

1 cup vinegar
2 teaspoons mustard seed
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
green plums

Directions

Make the brine

Combine vinegar, mustard seed, and salt in a pot and bring to a boil.

Pickle the plums

Pour the hot mixture over green plums before they ripen.
Let the plums sit overnight.
Drain the vinegar.
Reheat the vinegar.
Pour the reheated vinegar over the plums again.

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.

Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + plumtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).
Mustard + plumtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together158 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green plums: Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the tangy, salty pickling liquid.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the plums their sour flavor and helps preserve them.
Mustard seed: Contributes a sharp, pungent aroma and flavor to the pickling liquid.