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Mustard Pickles

Pickled cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, peppers, and green tomatoes in vinegar with mustard and sugar.

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 the sliced cucumbers overnight in salt water.

  2. Scald the small onions and cauliflower in salt water.

  3. Scald the sliced peppers and green tomatoes.

  4. Drain all vegetables.

  5. Place the drained vegetables in jars.

  6. Pour hot vinegar over the vegetables.

  7. Let the vegetables sit for three days.

  8. Drain the vinegar from the vegetables.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and ground mustard.

  2. Smooth the mixture with cold vinegar.

  3. Pour the mixture into boiling vinegar.

  4. Pour the resulting mixture over the pickles.

Store

  1. Store in stone jars.

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. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

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

Cucumbers
Provide the crisp, bulky body of the pickle after soaking in salt water.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and absorbs the vinegar and mustard flavour.
Ground mustard
Supplies the pungent, sharp flavour that defines the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity and mustard with sweetness.

The step that matters

Smoothing the flour and mustard with cold vinegar. Adding flour to hot liquid without first blending it into cold vinegar causes lumps, because starch clumps before it disperses. A smooth paste disperses evenly when poured into boiling vinegar, which then thickens it.

Swap the onion

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

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

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