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Mustard Pickues

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, turmeric, and curry powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Pickues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Soak the chopped vegetables in brine for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables and bring the brine to a boil.

  4. Pour the boiling brine over the drained vegetables.

Make the sauce and combine

  1. In a separate pot, combine boiling vinegar, sugar, flour, mustard, turmeric, and curry powder.

  2. Pour this mixture over the vegetables.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + cauliflowertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the pickles.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that defines the pickle.
Turmeric
Gives the pickles their characteristic yellow colour.

The step that matters

Combining the flour into the hot vinegar mixture. Flour added to hot liquid can form lumps if not blended smoothly first. Its starch thickens the sauce as it heats, so an even mix gives a smooth, evenly coated pickle.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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