Name: Mixed Pickles
Ingredients: tiny cucumbers (not longer than your little finger); radish pods; minute clusters of cauliflower; small string beans; baby onions; nasturtium seed; coarse sea salt; cold water

Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mixed Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare a large stone jar or clean wooden container.
Layer tiny cucumbers and other small vegetables, sprinkling coarse sea salt between each layer.
Add cold water to the second layer of salt to keep the pickles submerged.
Place an inverted plate with a stone on top to prevent floating.
After 2-3 weeks, pour off the brine and select firm pickles, discarding any soft ones.
Wash the firm pickles well and cover them with cold, clear water.
Change the water after 24 hours and repeat until the next day.

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.

Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together212 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Radish + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together55 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together290 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Cucumber + beanstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together602 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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, radish, cauliflower, beans):

Broccolifits better
Lettucefits better
Beetrootfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, radish, cauliflower, beans. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.