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Mttstard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and green peppers in a seasoned brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Mttstard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and green peppers in a brine made from 4 quarts of water and ½ pint of coarse sea salt for 24 hours.

  2. Heat the brine to scalding and drain the vegetables through a colander.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 cup of flour, 6 tablespoons of mustard, and 1 tablespoon of turmeric with enough cold vinegar to form a paste.

  2. Add 1 cup of sugar and enough vinegar to the paste to make 2 quarts.

  3. Boil the mixture until smooth.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the vegetables and boil until heated through.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cucumbers
Their firm flesh holds crunch after brining and pickling.
Green tomatoes
Their firm, tart flesh keeps its shape and adds acidity to the pickles.
Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it coats the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor that balances the sugar and vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the sauce its yellow color and a earthy aroma.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Make the paste smooth before adding the rest of the vinegar. Flour lumps stay lumpy once liquid is added, so mixing the flour, mustard, and turmeric with cold vinegar first lets the starch disperse evenly. Adding hot liquid to dry starch clumps it, and boiling then sets those lumps into the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, flour, mustard, turmeric. 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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