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Mustard Pickles I

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, cauliflower, onions, peppers, and mustard, preserved in a vinegar and sugar 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 I

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash cucumbers and cut if necessary.

  2. Wash cauliflowers and break into small pieces.

  3. Wash and peel onions, then cut peppers into strips.

  4. Put vegetables into separate dishes.

  5. Cover with hot brine (½ cup salt to 1 quart boiling water) and let stand overnight.

  6. Drain the vegetables.

Make the pickling sauce

  1. Heat vinegar to boiling.

  2. Mix sugar, flour, and seasonings.

  3. Add vinegar slowly and cook until thick.

Combine and seal

  1. Add vegetables and cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Bottle and seal.

  3. Store in a stone crock.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cauliflower + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together935 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp, firm vegetable body of the pickle.
Cauliflowers
Add firm texture and bulk that holds its shape in the thick sauce.
Pickling onions
Contribute savory flavour and a tender bite after pickling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar and mustard.
Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it coats the vegetables.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar slowly and cook until thick. Adding hot vinegar gradually to the flour and mustard mixture keeps it smooth; dumping it in at once causes lumps. Cooking until thick lets the starch from the flour swell and set the sauce so it clings to the vegetables.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, onion, pepper, vinegar, 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.

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