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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, flour, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower 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 ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, cauliflower, and celery in a large bowl with salt and water.

  2. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the water and rinse the vegetables in cold water.

  4. Scald the vegetables in boiling water for 5 to 10 minutes until tender.

  5. Drain the vegetables again.

Make the dressing and combine

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, flour, sugar, cayenne, and turmeric with a little vinegar until smooth.

  2. Stir the dressing into 1 quart of boiling vinegar.

  3. Pour the mixture over the vegetables.

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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp, firm body of the pickle.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the mustard dressing so it coats the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow color.

The step that matters

Stir the dressing into the boiling vinegar. Flour mixed with mustard can clump if added without being smoothed first, and it thickens only when heated. Mixing it smooth with a little vinegar before adding it to hot vinegar helps it blend evenly and thicken without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, pepper, cauliflower, celery, mustard, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, pepper, cauliflower, celery, mustard, flour. 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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