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Mixed Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix of cucumbers, onions, beans, cauliflower, tomatoes, and peppers in a vinegar‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak cucumbers, onions, green beans, cauliflower, green tomatoes, and red peppers in salt water overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the vegetables and place them in a large pan.

  3. Add 3 pints of vinegar and 3 pints of water to the pan and heat until scalding.

Make the sauce

  1. In another bowl, mix ¾ pound of flour, ¾ pound of ground white mustard, and 1 pint of olive oil until smooth.

  2. Stir in 6 pints of vinegar, 4 pints of sugar, and 1 ounce of turmeric, then bring to a boil.

Combine and bottle

  1. Pour the boiling mixture over the vegetables, mix well, and bottle.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Green beans + cauliflowertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

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

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 vegetable body of the pickle.
Ground white mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it clings to the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and flavors the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and mild earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour, mustard and oil into a smooth paste. Mixing dry powders with oil before adding liquid prevents lumps; if the paste is not smooth, lumps of flour or mustard stay in the sauce and it thickens unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, green beans, cauliflower, tomato, pepper, horseradish, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, green beans, cauliflower, tomato, pepper, horseradish, 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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