Name: Mustard Pickles
Ingredients: ¼ ounce allspice; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ½ pound mustard seed; ½ pound ground mustard; 2 pounds brown sugar; cold cider vinegar; curry powder

Why it works: Allspice and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Sprinkle vegetables with coarse sea salt and let them stand for 24 hours.
Drain the vegetables well.
In a porcelain kettle, combine the vegetables with cold cider vinegar and boil slowly for 2 hours.
Mix in the allspice, cayenne pepper, and brown sugar.
When almost done, thicken with ground mustard and curry powder.
Add mustard seed last.

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.

Allspice + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 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

Swap the allspice

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

Allspicethe original
Tarragonfits about as well
Dillfits less well
Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, sugar, cider, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.