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Mixed Pickles

A pickled mixture of beans, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and other vegetables seasoned with spices and sweetened with brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and lima beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the lima beans, string beans, cauliflower, and celery in strong salt water until tender.

  2. Drain the boiled vegetables.

  3. Scald the green tomatoes, small onions, and cantaloupe with 3 or 4 coverings of boiling water.

  4. Season the scalded vegetables with salt.

  5. Soak the pickles and cabbage overnight in strong salt water.

  6. Drain the soaked pickles and cabbage.

Mix and pickle

  1. Mix all the vegetables together with the seeds.

  2. Combine the ground spices and add them to the vegetable mixture.

  3. Boil the brown sugar and vinegar together.

  4. Pour the boiled sugar-vinegar mixture over the pickles.

  5. Seal the pickles.

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. Beans + lima beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharp vinegar in the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp body of the mixed pickle.
Green tomatoes
Adds firm texture and tart flavour to the mix.
Small onions
Adds savoury flavour and firm texture to the mix.

The step that matters

Drain the boiled vegetables and soaked pickles. Excess water left in the vegetables dilutes the sugar-vinegar liquid, weakening its acidity and making the pickles less crisp and less well preserved.

Swap the lima beans

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, tomato, onion, cauliflower, pepper, celery, cabbage. 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.

More mixed pickles recipes

English 3 See all 133 →

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