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Mixed Mustard Pickles

A pickled mixture of onions, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, and cauliflower in a mustard‑based brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mixed Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickles

  1. Fill a 3‑gallon jar with mixed pickles and let them stand in salt and water for 24 hours.

  2. Drain the pickles and cook them for 10 minutes in a porcelain kettle.

  3. Drain again and return the pickles to the jar.

Make the mustard sauce and combine

  1. Boil 3 quarts of vinegar and thicken it with ¾ pound of ground mustard mixed with cold vinegar.

  2. When thick, pour the mixture over the pickles.

  3. Add sugar and whole mustard seed if desired.

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. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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

Ground mustard
Thickens the vinegar into a sauce and gives the pickles their sharp mustard flavor.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives the sauce its tang.
Mixed pickles
Form the main body of the dish, with their firm textures holding up to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the mustard sauce. Ground mustard must be smoothly blended with cold vinegar before it goes into the boiling vinegar, so it does not clump. The mixture should be allowed to become thick before it is poured over the pickles, so the sauce coats them rather than running off.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, tomato, butter, beans, cucumber, cauliflower, vinegar):

  1. Broccolifits about as well
  2. Lettucefits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, tomato, butter, beans, cucumber, cauliflower, vinegar. 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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