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Mustard Pickle

A pickled cabbage, onion, and pepper mixture flavored with mustard, vinegar, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,279 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Salt the cabbage, onions, and red peppers separately and let them sit for 24 hours.

  2. Scald each ingredient in vinegar with a little turmeric dissolved in it, then discard the vinegar.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a separate pot, combine 2 quarts of fresh vinegar with 3 tablespoons of mustard and mix until smooth.

  2. Bring the vinegar mixture to a boil and pour it over the scalded cabbage.

Pack and seal

  1. Pack the mixture into jars and seal tightly.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and keeps a crisp texture after salting and scalding.
Silver skin onions
Adds body and a mild sweetness that softens slightly during pickling.
Red peppers
Contributes colour, crunch and a mild sweetness to the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour and helps thicken and emulsify the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the cabbage, onions, and peppers through osmosis. Removing this water keeps the vegetables crisp and lets the final brine absorb more flavour instead of diluting it.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, vinegar, mustard, 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.

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