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Mustard Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, green beans, peppers, onions, and mustard in a sweet oil and vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the cucumbers, green beans, green peppers, and onions into small pieces.

  2. Soak the cucumbers and green beans in a strong brine for 24 hours.

  3. Remove the cucumbers and beans from the brine.

Make the dressing and combine

  1. Mix the ground mustard with sweet oil and vinegar.

  2. Pour the mustard mixture over the cucumbers and beans.

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. Beans + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 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

Ground mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the vegetables.
Sweet oil
Adds fat that carries the mustard flavour and coats the vegetables.

The step that matters

Soaking the cucumbers and beans in brine. Salt draws water out of the vegetables and firms their texture. If the brine is too weak or the soak runs too long, the pieces stay soft; if too strong, they taste overly salty.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, beans, pepper, mustard, vinegar. 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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