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Yellow Pickle

A pickled mixture of green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and celery in mustard, flour, sugar, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Yellow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the green peppers, cucumbers, green tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and celery.

  2. Cover the chopped vegetables with coarse sea salt and let them stand for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables and add 1 cup of mustard seed.

Make the pickle

  1. In a bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of mustard, 2½ cups of flour, 3½ cups of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of turmeric powder.

  2. Scald 4½ quarts of cider vinegar in a pot.

  3. When the vinegar is scalding, add the mixture and the vegetables.

  4. Leave on the stove to scald until the vegetables are soft, but do not boil.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 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

Green tomatoes
Add bulk and a tart, acidic flavor that balances the sugar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp taste.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, sauce-like binder around the vegetables.
Turmeric powder
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow color and a mild earthy aroma.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavor and a crunchy texture to the pickle.

The step that matters

Scald without boiling. Holding the vinegar mixture just below a boil softens the vegetables while keeping them intact. Boiling can overcook them into mush and can cause the flour mixture to clump or scorch on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, celery, mustard, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, celery, 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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