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Mixed Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture with mustard, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 514 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Put mustard in a jar or basin.

  2. Add salt and mustard seed.

  3. Add turmeric and black pepper.

  4. Add cayenne and vinegar.

  5. Stir until the mixture is the consistency of thin cream.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Break cauliflower into small pieces.

  2. Add cauliflower pieces to an earthen jar.

  3. Add celery, trench beans, small onions, gherkins, nasturtium seeds, and red peppers.

  4. Pour the prepared vinegar over the vegetables.

  5. Stir well.

Pickle and store

  1. Cover the jar closely.

  2. Keep it in a warm place.

  3. Stir every day for a month.

  4. Divide into glass pickle jars.

  5. Keep for several months 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. Turmeric + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 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

Mustard
Provides the sharp flavour and thick base that the pickling mixture is built on.
Mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter bite and body to the dressing.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy flavour.
Cayenne
Adds heat that builds over the long pickling period.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp vegetable base that holds its texture in the dressing.
Vinegar
Acidifies the mixture, preserving the vegetables and sharpening the flavour.

The step that matters

Stir every day for a month. Regular stirring keeps the spices and mustard evenly distributed through the thick dressing, so the vegetables pickle uniformly instead of sitting in uneven pockets of acid and spice.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Chickpeafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, turmeric, pepper, vinegar, cream, 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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