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Mustard Pickles

Pickled cucumbers, gherkins, onions, and cauliflower in a mustard and curry powder brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Make a strong brine (enough to float a potato) and soak the cucumbers, gherkins, onions, and cauliflowers in it for 2 to 3 days.

Make the pickles

  1. Mix the mustard and curry powder with 1 quart of vinegar to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the remaining vinegar and the washed pickles to the mixture.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring continuously.

  4. Store in bottles.

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle's character.
Curry powder
Contributes warm spice aroma and colour to the pickling mixture.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Cauliflowers
Forms the firm, crisp bulk of the pickle and absorbs the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the paste with the vegetables. Stirring continuously keeps the mustard and curry paste from scorching on the bottom of the pan, and a full boil for the stated time ensures the mixture is hot throughout before bottling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cauliflower, vinegar, mustard):

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

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