Skip to main content
Main

Mixed Pickles

A preserved mixture of French beans, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, and spices in a vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the trimmed French beans, peeled onions, cabbage pieces, and cauliflower sprigs.

  2. Blanch the vegetables in boiling salted water for 5 minutes, then drain.

  3. Spread the vegetables on a cloth and dry them in the sun.

  4. Mix the dried vegetables together and place them in stone jars.

Make the pickle liquor

  1. In a bowl, combine vinegar, dry salt, ground ginger, powdered mace, bruised red chillies, mustard flour, turmeric, chopped shallots, and chopped garlic.

  2. Mix the ingredients into the vinegar while cold, then boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool completely, then pour it over the vegetables in the jars.

Store

  1. Seal the jars tightly and store them for at least 6 months before using.

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. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 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

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard flour
Adds pungent heat and flavour that mellows during long storage.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy aroma.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm, absorbent body of the pickle that takes up the spiced vinegar.
Cabbage
Adds crunch and body, holding its texture after blanching and pickling.
Shallots
Contribute savoury sweetness and aroma to the pickling liquor.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables before jarring. Any moisture left on the blanched vegetables dilutes the vinegar and can allow spoilage, so they should be fully dry before they go into the jars with the cooled liquor.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, vinegar, ginger, mustard):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, vinegar, ginger, 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.

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipes