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Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of apples, cauliflower, onions, beans, green tomatoes, chillies, and other vegetables in vinegar and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut cauliflower, small onions, beans, green tomatoes, and chillies into pieces.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and let sit for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Peel and thinly slice the apples.

  2. Boil the apples with the vinegar until the liquid thickens.

  3. Add all other ingredients and boil for a few minutes.

Combine and bottle

  1. Add the drained vegetables to the vinegar mixture.

  2. Boil for one minute, then bottle and cover.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  4. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Break down into the thickened vinegar, adding body and a tart flavor.
Vinegar
Provides the acidic base that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavor and helps thicken the spiced sauce.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp vegetable bulk that absorbs the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis, so they soften less and stay crisper in the vinegar. Draining well removes the released liquid, which would otherwise dilute the pickling mixture and weaken its preserving effect.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, ginger, pepper, turmeric, sugar, mustard, cauliflower):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, ginger, pepper, turmeric, sugar, mustard, cauliflower. 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

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