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Universal Pickle

A mixed vegetable pickle made with vinegar, spices, mustard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Universal Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Combine vinegar, salt, cloves, ginger, mace, allspice, black pepper, and red pepper in a large pot. Bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and let cool.

  3. Mix ground mustard and turmeric into a smooth paste with some of the vinegar.

  4. Add the mustard and turmeric paste to the cooled vinegar mixture.

Pack and add vegetables

  1. Transfer the mixture to a large stone jar and keep it covered.

  2. Rinse vegetables before adding them to the jar.

  3. Add the vegetables to the jar as they are gathered.

  4. Adjust sweetness with sugar to taste.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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.
Salt
Seasons the brine and helps draw moisture from the vegetables, firming their texture.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and body to the brine.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and a warm, earthy flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the vinegar mixture cool before adding the mustard and turmeric paste. Mustard and turmeric are mixed into the brine after boiling so that heat does not dull the mustard's pungency or break down its flavour compounds.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, mustard, clove, ginger, allspice, pepper, turmeric):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, clove, ginger, allspice, pepper, 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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