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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard and turmeric, simmered in a sweetened vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lima beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil each vegetable separately in salted water until well done, removing seeds from the peppers first.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, flour, mustard, and turmeric powder.

  2. Add the vinegar to the dry ingredients and stir constantly until it boils.

  3. Cook until thickened to the consistency of custard.

Combine and jar

  1. Mix in the boiled vegetables.

  2. Pack into jars while hot.

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. Beans + lima beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  3. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + cucumbertop 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

Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a custard-like sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
French mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle.
Turmeric powder
Gives the pickle its yellow colour and a mild, earthy flavour.
Cauliflower
Provides bulk and a firm, crisp texture in the finished pickle.

The step that matters

Cook the vinegar and flour mixture until thickened. Flour must be stirred smoothly into the liquid and cooked until the starch swells. If it is undercooked, the sauce stays thin and tastes raw; if it scorches on the bottom, it turns bitter. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More mustard pickles recipes

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