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Mixed Pickle

A pickled mixture of tomatoes, cucumbers, string beans, onions, cauliflower, peppers, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Mixed Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Salt the tomatoes and cucumbers overnight, then drain them the next morning.

  2. Boil the string beans and cauliflower until soft.

Pickle and seal

  1. Mix all ingredients together, cover with vinegar, bring to a boil, and seal.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and absorb the vinegar and spices as they cook.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and bulk, softened somewhat by the overnight salting.
String beans
Add body and texture, softened by boiling before they are mixed.
Cauliflower
Adds firm bulk and texture that holds up in the vinegar brine.
Small onions
Add savoury flavour and a mild sharpness that mellows in the brine.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Salting the tomatoes and cucumbers overnight. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis, so they lose moisture and stay crisp rather than watery in the finished pickle. Draining them thoroughly the next morning removes that excess liquid and salt before the vinegar is added.

Swap the onion

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

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

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