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Mustard Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine equal parts of white wine vinegar and water to make 3 ½ pints.

  2. Mix sugar, coarse sea salt, ground mustard, flour, and turmeric in a bowl. Add enough water to form a paste.

  3. Scald the vinegar and water mixture, then pour it over the paste. Cook until a creamy dressing forms.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak tiny cucumbers, string beans, and cauliflower florets in brine overnight.

  2. Boil the soaked vegetables until tender, then add them to the mustard dressing.

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. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  4. Turmeric + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Turmeric + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the pickle and helps preserve the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Ground mustard
Supplies the pungent, sharp mustard flavour that defines the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the mustard mixture into a creamy dressing as it cooks.
Turmeric
Gives the dressing its bright yellow colour and mild earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until creamy. Flour thickens only when the paste and liquid are heated together and stirred, so the starch can swell. Undercooking leaves the dressing thin and floury-tasting.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Beansthe original

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