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Mustard Pickles

A pickled cucumber recipe using vinegar, brown sugar, mustard, turmeric, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,279 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the cucumbers

  1. Fill a 1-gallon crock with cucumbers and cover with water and ½ cup of coarse sea salt.

  2. Let stand overnight.

  3. Drain the cucumbers.

Make the pickle

  1. Boil 1 quart of vinegar and 9 cups of brown sugar until it comes to a boil.

  2. Add the cucumbers to the boiling vinegar-sugar solution.

  3. Let it come to a boil again.

  4. Mix ½ cup of flour with some vinegar.

  5. Add 9 tablespoons of mustard and 1 heaping teaspoon of turmeric powder.

  6. Combine the flour‑mustard‑turmeric mixture with the boiling cucumbers.

  7. Put the pickles in bottles and cork them immediately.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Turmeric + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the pickle itself, becoming crisp-tender and firm once brined and simmered in the syrup.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the vinegar syrup, balancing its sharpness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle's character.
Flour
Thickens the mustard mixture so the sauce clings to the cucumbers.
Turmeric
Contributes a yellow colour and mild earthy aroma to the pickles.

The step that matters

Adding the flour-mustard-turmeric mixture. Flour mixed into liquid must be fully smoothed first, or it forms lumps. Stirring it into boiling liquid also needs constant motion, otherwise the starch can scorch on the bottom of the pot or thicken unevenly.

Swap the turmeric

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, vinegar, sugar, mustard, flour. 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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