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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, peppers, celery, and cauliflower in a mustard and vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Soak and cook the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, green tomatoes, onions, green peppers, celery, cauliflower, salt, and enough water to cover in a large bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand overnight.

  3. Cook the mixture in the soaking water until tender, then drain well.

Make the sauce and bottle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, ground mustard, turmeric, flour mixture, and sugar.

  2. Stir well and bring to a boil.

  3. Bottle the mixture while hot.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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 defines the pickle and helps preserve it.
Ground mustard
Supplies the main sharp, pungent mustard flavor of the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar sauce so it coats the vegetables.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its yellow colour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sourness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stir well while bringing the sauce to a boil. Flour thickens as it heats, so stirring keeps it smooth and stops it settling and scorching on the base of the pot before the sauce is ready to bottle.

Swap the onion

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

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

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