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Mustard Dressing for Pickles

A mustard-based dressing made with vinegar, sugar, flour, mustard, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mustard Dressing for Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, and mustard together.

  2. Wet the mixture with a little vinegar to form a thin paste, stirring until smooth.

Cook the dressing

  1. Heat the remaining vinegar in a pot until boiling.

  2. Stir the paste into the boiling vinegar and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Add the coarse sea salt at the end and mix well.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the vinegar into a smooth, pourable dressing as it cooks.
Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Vinegar
Supplies the liquid base and acidity that carries the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Stir the paste into the boiling vinegar. Flour lumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Making a smooth thin paste first and stirring constantly while it cooks lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken the dressing without clumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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