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Preserve

Mustard Pickles

A pickle of cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, celery and green peppers in a thick mustard-flavoured vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Soak cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, celery, and green peppers overnight in a weak brine made of equal parts vinegar and water.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours, then scald in the brine and drain thoroughly.

Make the dressing

  1. In a pot, combine brown sugar, flour, turmeric, mustard, and vinegar.

  2. Heat the mixture until it scalds for 5 minutes, stirring to prevent burning.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles while still 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. 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. Celery + turmerictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the mustard dressing so it coats the pickles.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and sharpens the flavor.
Mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavor to the dressing.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their yellow colour and a mild earthy flavor.
Cucumbers
Form the crisp, main body of the pickles.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing while stirring. Flour and sugar scorch easily on the bottom of a pot. Constant stirring keeps the thickened mixture smooth and prevents a burnt taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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