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Mustard Pickles

A pickled cucumber and vegetable mix flavored with mustard, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

  1. Soak cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, green tomatoes, and green peppers in brine and drain.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar and brown sugar; boil for 5 minutes and skim.

  2. Mix flour and ground mustard together in a bowl.

  3. Slowly pour the hot vinegar mixture onto the flour and mustard, stirring until smooth.

Combine and rest

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

  2. Let the pickles sit for 3 weeks before using.

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 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 vegetable body of the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Brown sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness and depth.
Flour
Thickens the hot vinegar mixture into a smooth, coating sauce.
Ground mustard
Supplies the mustard flavour and, with the flour, thickens the sauce.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables in the brine, firming their texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot vinegar into the flour and mustard. Adding the hot liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour from clumping. Lumps form if the liquid goes in too fast, so the sauce will not turn smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, tomato, pepper, vinegar, sugar, 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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