Skip to main content
Main

Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, curry powder, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Soak cucumbers, onions, string beans, cauliflower, celery, and sweet peppers in strong salt water overnight.

  2. Drain and cut the vegetables into desired shapes.

  3. Scald the vegetables in weak salt water.

Make the dressing and pack

  1. In a pot, combine mustard, curry powder, and vinegar; bring to a boil.

  2. Thicken the mixture with a little flour as needed.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles in jars.

  4. Do not seal while scalding.

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. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

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

Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle's character.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Curry powder
Supplies warm, aromatic spice that colours and flavours the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the mustard dressing so it coats the vegetables.

The step that matters

Thickening the mixture with flour. Flour must be added in small amounts and cooked through while boiling, because raw flour leaves a pasty taste and uneven thickness. Adding too much at once makes the dressing lumpy or gluey.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, beans, cauliflower, celery, 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.

More mustard pickles recipes

Mixed 7 See all 151 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipes