Skip to main content
Main

Chopped Mustard Picille

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, cabbage, and peppers flavored with mustard, sugar, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chopped Mustard Picille

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Combine chopped cucumbers, onions, green tomatoes, cabbage, and both green and red peppers in a large bowl.

  2. Cover the mixture with water, add ½ cup coarse sea salt, soak for 3 hours, then drain.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. Mix 1½ cups dry mustard, 5 cups sugar, and 1½ cups flour in a separate bowl.

  2. Add 3 quarts vinegar to the dry mixture and stir until well combined.

Cook

  1. Cook the combined mixture over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring frequently.

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

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

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 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 balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.
Flour
Thickens the mustard mixture so it clings to the chopped vegetables.
Dry mustard
Supplies the pungent, sharp mustard flavor that gives the pickle its character.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the chopped vegetables, giving the pickle its main texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the mustard mixture over medium heat. Flour and dry mustard can scorch or form lumps on the bottom of the pan if not stirred often. Stirring keeps the heat even and the sauce smooth as it thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cabbage, pepper, mustard, sugar, flour. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRed CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes