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Chopped Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, onions, peppers, tomatoes, and cauliflower or cabbage in a vinegar-sugar-mustard sauce.

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

Chopped Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop or slice the cucumbers, onions, green peppers, green tomatoes, and cauliflower or cabbage.

  2. Boil the chopped vegetables in salt water until tender, then drain.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a kettle, combine 3 quarts of vinegar with 1 quart of vinegar mixed with 1 pound of mustard, 6 cups of sugar, and 2 cups of flour.

  2. Boil the mixture until thick, then pour it over the pickles.

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

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that preserves the pickles and balances the sugar.
Flour
Thickens the boiled dressing so it coats the vegetables.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and contributes to the pungent character of the dressing.
Cauliflower or cabbage
Supplies bulk and a firm, crisp texture to the chopped pickle mix.

The step that matters

Boil the dressing until thick. Flour thickens only when it is boiled long enough for its starch to swell and set. If the mixture stays thin, the flour will not coat the vegetables and the dressing will run off.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, tomato, cauliflower, vinegar, mustard, sugar. 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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