Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Pickles, and Sour Fruit Salads

A pickled vegetable mix preserved in a vinegar, salt, sugar, and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Vegetable Pickles, and Sour Fruit Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables by washing and cutting them into desired shapes.

Make the brine

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, salt, sugar, mustard seeds, peppercorns, and dill seeds.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then remove from heat.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the vegetables into sterilized jars and pour the hot vinegar mixture over them.

  2. Seal the jars and let them cool before storing in a cool, dark place.

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. Carrot + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together321 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together530 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together560 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

Vegetables
Provide the crisp, crunchy body that the pickling liquid flavors.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and gives pickles their sharp, tangy flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.
Salt
Seasons the brine and adds savory depth to the pickles.

The step that matters

Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the vegetables while packing. The brine must be hot when it goes into the sterilized jars so the vegetables are well covered and the seal forms properly during cooling. Keeping the vegetables submerged in acidic liquid is what keeps the pickles safe to store.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, mustard, dill):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, mustard, dill. 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 vegetable pickles recipes

Mixed 12 See all 3 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipesCreamed CauliflowerCreamed Cauliflower17 recipes