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Mixed Pickle

A pickled vegetable mix using onions, cucumbers, cabbage, mangoes, peppers, and spices, preserved in vinegar and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Prepare any vegetables that can be pickled, such as onions, cucumbers, cabbage, mangoes, and peppers.

  2. Soak the vegetables in a mixture of salt and water with enough turmeric to turn them yellow for 24 hours, stirring frequently.

  3. Drain and dry the vegetables.

  4. Place the vegetables in jars.

Make the vinegar mixture

  1. For every quart of vinegar, add 1 tablespoon of mustard seed, 1 tablespoon of turmeric, 1 tablespoon of whole black pepper, and garlic if desired.

  2. Boil the spices (except mustard seed) in a bag with the vinegar and let it cool.

  3. Hard boil some eggs.

  4. Mash the boiled eggs with enough sweet oil to make a paste.

  5. Stir the egg paste into the cooled vinegar.

Pickle and rest

  1. Pour the vinegar mixture over the pickles in the jars.

  2. Add a handful of salt to each jar.

  3. Cover the jars tightly.

  4. Let them stand for three days 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. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Mashed into a paste that thickens the vinegar mixture and gives it a creamy body.
Sweet oil
Blends with the mashed eggs to form a smooth paste that carries flavor into the vinegar.
Small green tomatoes
Firm vegetables that hold their texture and crunch well in a vinegar brine.
Cabbage
Firm, dense vegetable that stays crisp and absorbs the vinegar brine well.

The step that matters

Soaking the vegetables in salt water with turmeric for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the vegetables and firms their texture, while turmeric colors them yellow. Stirring keeps the brine evenly in contact with every piece so the color and salting are uniform.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, cucumber, cabbage, pepper, tomato, cauliflower, celery):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, cucumber, cabbage, pepper, tomato, cauliflower, celery. 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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