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Mustard Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, and green peppers flavored with mustard, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Combine cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, and green peppers in a large bowl.

  2. Make a brine with 4 quarts of water and 1 pint of coarse sea salt; pour over vegetables and let stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables in a colander and heat just enough to seal.

  4. Pre‑cook the cauliflower slightly to soften it.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ cup flour, 6 tablespoons ground mustard, and 1 tablespoon turmeric with enough cold vinegar to make a smooth paste.

  2. Add 1 cup sugar and enough vinegar to total 2 quarts; boil until thick and smooth, stirring constantly.

Combine and cook

  1. Add the drained vegetables and cook until heated through.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and give it a firm, crisp bite.
Cauliflower
Adds firm pieces that soak up the sauce and give a crunchy texture.
Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it clings to the vegetables.
Ground mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the sauce its yellow color and a warm, earthy aroma.
Sugar
Sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Make the smooth paste before boiling. Mix the flour, mustard and turmeric with cold vinegar until no lumps remain before adding the rest. Flour lumps that hit hot liquid stay lumpy, and the sauce can scorch on the bottom, so keep stirring as it thickens.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, flour, mustard, turmeric, sugar. 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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