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Mustard Pickles

Pickles are soaked, layered, and seasoned with boiled mustard, spices, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the large pickles and small pickles.

  2. Soak each vegetable in salt water overnight separately.

  3. Dry all the vegetables and layer them in a container.

Pickle and cover

  1. Boil the mustard, mixed spices, and vinegar for 20 minutes. Pour the hot mixture over the vegetables.

  2. The next morning, pour a little salad oil over the top and cover with a cloth.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  3. Beans + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,211 recipes

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

  4. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Salt water (in the method)
Draws moisture out of the vegetables, helping them stay crisp during pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickles.
Best mustard
Adds the main pungent flavor and thickens the pickling liquid.
Mixed spices
Gives the pickling liquid its aromatic, warm flavor.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables before layering. Vegetables that are still wet dilute the hot pickling liquid and soften the texture, so drying them well helps keep the pickles crisp and the brine strong.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, beans, corn, pepper, mustard, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, beans, corn, pepper, mustard, 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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