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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Make a strong brine (enough to float a potato) and soak the cucumbers, gherkins, onions, and cauliflowers for 2 to 3 days.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. Mix the mustard and curry powder with 1 quart of vinegar to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the remaining vinegar and the washed pickles to the mixture.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring well throughout.

Store

  1. Store in bottles.

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. 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 main body of the pickles and absorb the brine and vinegar flavor.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps thicken the sauce into a paste.
Curry powder
Contributes warm spice aroma and color to the sauce.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickles their tang.
Cauliflowers
Add crisp, firm texture that holds up in the hot sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the pickles in the mustard sauce. Stirring constantly prevents the mustard and flour-free paste from scorching or separating on the bottom of the pan. Keeping the vegetables evenly coated lets the sauce thicken uniformly and the pickles heat through.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, 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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