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Mustard Pickle

A pickled cucumber and vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, turmeric, and celery seed.

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 Pickle

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 dressing

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

  2. Dissolve turmeric in a little water, then add flour and mustard to the boiling mixture.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles.

  4. This pickle can be used immediately but improves with age.

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
Provide the crisp, bulky body of the pickle after brining.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp taste.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the mustard mixture so it coats the vegetables.
Mustard
Adds the pungent, sharp flavour that defines the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and mustard to the boiling mixture. Flour added to a hot liquid can clump if not dissolved smoothly first, leaving lumps in the sauce. Stirring it into a boiling mixture with the turmeric already dissolved helps it blend evenly and thicken the dressing uniformly.

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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