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Mustard Pickles

Pickles made with cucumbers, onions, beans, cauliflower, nasturtiums, peppers, ground mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Salt each ingredient separately and let sit for 24 hours.

  2. Scald each ingredient with vinegar separately and discard the vinegar.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. Mix the ground mustard with a little vinegar until smooth.

  2. Boil 2 quarts of vinegar, then add the mustard mixture.

Pack and pour

  1. Pack the pickles into bottles and pour the mustard‑vinegar mixture over them.

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

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

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

Salt (in the method)
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and helping them keep their crunch.
Ground mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle and thickens the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.

The step that matters

Adding the mustard mixture to the boiling vinegar. Ground mustard can clump or turn lumpy if added to liquid unevenly. Mixing it smooth with a little vinegar first and then stirring it into boiling vinegar helps it blend into an even, smooth sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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