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Mixed Pickle

A pickled vegetable mix of cucumbers, cauliflower, peppers, onions, beans, celery, tomatoes, sweetened with brown sugar and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lima beans and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Mixed Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil each type of vegetable separately in salted water until soft.

  2. Drain the vegetables.

Make the dressing and pack

  1. In a large pot, combine brown sugar, vinegar, flour, yellow mustard, curry powder, turmeric, and celery seed.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add all the drained vegetables to the dressing and heat the mixture thoroughly.

  4. Pack the mixture into jars 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. Lima beans + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the vinegar dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the dressing so it coats the vegetables.
Yellow mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps emulsify the thick dressing.
Cauliflower
Forms a firm, bulky vegetable base that holds its shape in the dressing.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture thoroughly. Flour thickens only when heated fully, and the mixture must be hot enough to reduce the chance of spoilage before jarring. Underheating leaves the dressing thin and the jars less stable.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, lima beans, beans, celery, tomato. 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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