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Mixed Pickles, Hot

A spicy pickled vegetable mixture made with malt vinegar, ginger, mustard, and assorted vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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, Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Combine malt vinegar with ginger, mustard, salt, mustard seed, turmeric, black pepper, and chillies in a jar.

  2. Bruise the other spices and add them to the jar.

Steep and add vegetables

  1. Seal the jar and keep it in a warm place for three weeks, stirring the contents every other day with a wooden spoon.

  2. After three weeks, add your choice of vegetables to the mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  4. Turmeric + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + peppertop 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

Malt vinegar
Provides the acidic liquid that extracts flavour from the spices and preserves the vegetables.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during the long steeping.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy flavour.
Chillies
Add heat that infuses into the vinegar over the steeping period.
Ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic pungency to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Steeping for three weeks in a warm place. The spices need sustained time in acidic vinegar to release their flavour and colour fully. Sealing the jar keeps aromas in, and regular stirring keeps the spices evenly in contact with the liquid so the flavour develops uniformly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against malt, vinegar, ginger, mustard, turmeric, pepper, beans. 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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