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Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, horseradish, and green tomatoes in cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,832 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine cucumbers, green peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, horseradish, and green tomatoes in a large bowl.

  2. Prepare a brine with vinegar to cover the vegetables and let them soak.

  3. Drain the mixture and let it cool.

Season and pickle

  1. Add ground mustard and turmeric to the cooled mixture.

  2. Cover the entire mixture with good cider vinegar.

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. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, firm body of the pickle mix.
Cauliflower
Adds bulk and a firm, crunchy texture to the mixed vegetables.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and bulk that holds up well after soaking in vinegar.
Onions
Add savory flavor and aroma that mellows during pickling.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that gives the pickle its characteristic bite.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives them their tang.

The step that matters

Draining and cooling before adding mustard and turmeric. The vegetables must be well drained and cooled so that added ground mustard and turmeric distribute evenly and do not clump or turn watery in the vinegar. Residual liquid dilutes the seasoning and weakens the pickle.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, cauliflower, cabbage, onion, horseradish, mustard):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cauliflower, cabbage, onion, horseradish, 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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