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Mustard Pickles

Pickled cucumbers, onions, peppers, cauliflower, and spices in mustard and vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Put each vegetable in separate dishes and cover with hot brine.

  2. Let stand overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain off the liquid and combine all vegetables in one bowl.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Add brown sugar, cider vinegar, mustard seed, and celery seed.

  2. Heat until scalding.

  3. Make a paste with flour, mustard, and turmeric.

Finish and cook

  1. Stir in slowly and bring to a boil.

  2. Add chopped onions if desired.

  3. Adjust sugar to taste.

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

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

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity of the pickling liquid and helps preserve the vegetables.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard seed
Adds the pungent, sharp flavor that defines the pickle.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Mustard
Adds prepared mustard flavor to the sauce.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their yellow color and earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Stir the flour paste in slowly. Flour thickens only when its starch is evenly dispersed in the liquid and heated. Adding the paste slowly and stirring keeps it from clumping, and bringing the mixture to a boil activates the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, sugar, cider, vinegar, mustard):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, sugar, cider, 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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