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Pickles

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, cauliflower, onions, bell peppers, and spices, sweetened with sugar and thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak cucumbers and cauliflower in cold water for three days before cutting them up.

  2. Simmer cucumbers and cauliflower pieces in salted water for twenty minutes.

  3. Quarter the onions and cook them in milk and water with a little salt until just tender.

  4. Drain cucumbers, cauliflower, onions, and bell peppers (soaked in weak brine) until the next day.

Make the pickle and jar it

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pan, add enough vinegar to cover, and boil until it begins to thicken.

  2. Let it cool slightly, then transfer to glass jars with glass tops.

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. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + mustardtop 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

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp vegetable texture that holds up after soaking and simmering.
Cauliflower
Adds firm, bite-sized pieces that keep their structure in the brine.
Onions
Add mild sweetness and aroma that mellow during the pickling.
Bell peppers
Contribute colour and a fresh, slightly sweet vegetable flavour.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
White mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the pickle until it begins to thicken. Boiling drives off water and lets the spices and mustard flavours concentrate, while the vinegar keeps the mixture acidic. Overboiling can make the vegetables soft and the sauce overly dense.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, milk, turmeric, celery, mustard. 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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