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Mustard Pickles

Pickled vegetables of onion, cabbage, green tomatoes, and cucumbers in a mustard, flour, sugar, and turmeric brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Combine the chopped onion, cabbage, green tomatoes, and cucumbers in a large bowl.

  2. Cover the vegetables with ½ cup coarse sea salt and cold water.

  3. Let sit overnight.

Drain and cover with vinegar

  1. Drain the salt and water the next day.

  2. Cover the vegetables with vinegar and heat until warm.

  3. Drain again.

  4. Add enough vinegar to cover the vegetables.

Make the mustard sauce and bottle

  1. Stir in 1 cup mustard.

  2. Stir in ½ cup flour mixed in cold vinegar.

  3. Stir in 1 cup sugar.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Bottle the pickles.

  6. Mix 1 tablespoon turmeric powder with cold water.

  7. Add the turmeric mixture to the pickles for color.

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

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 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 crisp, firm bulk of the pickle after salting.
Mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so it clings to the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Turmeric powder
Gives the pickle its yellow color and a earthy aroma.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, leaving them crisper.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixed in cold vinegar. Flour added dry or to hot liquid clumps. Suspending it in cold vinegar first lets the starch spread evenly, so it thickens smoothly when the mixture heats.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cabbage, cucumber, vinegar, mustard, flour, sugar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cabbage, cucumber, vinegar, mustard, flour, sugar. 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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