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Mustard Pickles

A pickled mixture of onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, and red peppers flavored with mustard, sugar, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Combine onions, cucumbers, cauliflower, and red peppers in strong salt water and let stand overnight.

  2. Drain the mixture in the morning.

Make the dressing

  1. Cook the drained mixture for 10 minutes in the dressing.

  2. Mix 1 cup of vinegar with flour to make a paste.

  3. Add the remaining vinegar, sugar, mustard, and turmeric to the paste.

  4. Place the mixture in a granite kettle inside an old kettle with broken bricks and enough water to steam it.

  5. Steam until the mixture thickens, adding more vinegar if it becomes too thick.

Cook and jar

  1. Add the pickles a few at a time.

  2. Cook the pickles for 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer the pickles to a stone jar.

  4. Pour the dressing over the pickles.

  5. Seal the jar.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 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

Cucumbers
Stay crisp-textured and add bulk to the pickle mix.
Cauliflower
Adds firm texture and absorbs the mustard dressing.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar and mustard dressing into a smooth paste.
Mustard
Supplies the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the pickles and sharpens the flavor.

The step that matters

Steaming the dressing until it thickens. Flour thickens only as it heats and needs gentle, sustained heat to cook out its raw taste. Too little heat leaves the dressing thin or pasty, and adding vinegar lets you correct thickness without scorching it.

Swap the onion

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

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

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