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Dessert

Mustard Pickles

Pickled cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, peppers, and tomatoes flavored with mustard, turmeric, celery seed, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut cucumbers, onions, cauliflowers, green peppers, and green tomatoes into small pieces.

  2. Soak the vegetables in salt water overnight.

  3. In the morning, scald the vegetables in the same water, then drain.

Make the pickling sauce

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, and celery seed; bring to a boil.

  2. Dissolve mustard and turmeric in a little water, then add flour.

  3. Stir the mustard mixture into the boiling vinegar mixture.

  4. Pour the hot mixture over the drained vegetables.

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

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

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and keep a crisp bite after brining.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharp vinegar and adds sweetness to the sauce.
Mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that defines mustard pickles.
Flour
Thickens the mustard mixture so the sauce clings to the vegetables.
Turmeric
Adds the yellow colour and a mild earthy aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the mustard mixture to the boiling vinegar. Flour mixed into mustard can clump if added to liquid unevenly. Stirring it into already boiling vinegar while stirring constantly helps it disperse and thicken smoothly instead of lumping.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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