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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix flavored with mustard, salt, and vinegar.

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 ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, green tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and bell peppers in a large container.

  2. Prepare brine by dissolving 1 cup of coarse salt in 1 gallon of water.

  3. Cover the vegetables with the brine.

  4. Let the mixture sit for 24 hours.

Make the mustard sauce and combine

  1. Scald the mixture in the brine and drain.

  2. In a bowl, make a paste with ground mustard, flour, sugar, and enough vinegar to dissolve.

  3. Add the paste to 2 quarts of boiling vinegar.

  4. Let the mixture thicken.

  5. Add the drained pickles to the thickened mixture. Stir to combine.

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

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

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

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

  4. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

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

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and stay crisp-textured after brining.
Cauliflower
Adds firm, crunchy florets that hold their shape in the thick sauce.
Ground mustard
Provides the pungent, sharp flavor that defines the pickle and thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the mustard paste so it coats the vegetables evenly.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the paste to boiling vinegar. The mustard and flour paste must be smoothly dissolved before it meets the hot vinegar; otherwise lumps form and the sauce thickens unevenly. Keeping the vinegar at a full boil ensures the flour starch swells and thickens properly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, mustard, flour, sugar. 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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