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Mustard Pickle

A pickled vegetable dish flavored with mustard, sugar, turmeric, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Mustard Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the cauliflowers and break them into small pieces.

  2. Peel the onions.

  3. Wash the cucumbers, cutting them into smaller pieces if necessary.

  4. Soak the vegetables in brine overnight.

  5. Drain the vegetables.

  6. Scald the vegetables in vinegar.

  7. Remove the pickles.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. Mix the seasonings.

  2. Moisten with vinegar.

  3. Slowly add the seasoning mixture to hot vinegar while stirring constantly.

  4. Add the pickles.

  5. Cook for 4 hours.

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. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 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

Cauliflowers
Provide the firm, bulky vegetable body that holds its texture in the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle's character.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the vegetables.
Turmeric powder
Gives the sauce its yellow colour and a mild earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the seasoning mixture to the hot vinegar. Stirring constantly keeps the flour and spices dispersed, so they do not clump into lumps while the sauce thickens.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, sugar, cauliflower, turmeric, onion, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, sugar, cauliflower, turmeric, onion, vinegar, mustard. 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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