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Mrs. Merrill's Mustard Pickle

A pickle made with cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, onions, cabbage or cauliflower, preserved in a mustard‑flour 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 mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mrs. Merrill's Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook each vegetable separately in salted water until tender.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Stir the mixture until it boils.

Combine and store

  1. Pour the hot paste over the cooked vegetables.

  2. Store in a cool place; it will keep for one year.

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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 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

Flour
Thickens the vinegar and sugar mixture into a smooth paste that clings to the vegetables.
Dry mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavor.
Cucumber pickles
Supply the main crunchy vegetable body of the pickle.

The step that matters

Stir the paste until it boils. Flour starch only thickens once it reaches a boil, so the mixture must be stirred and brought fully to a boil or it will stay thin and runny and fail to coat the vegetables.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, onion, cabbage, vinegar, flour, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, onion, cabbage, vinegar, flour, 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.

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