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Yellow Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, and cabbage seasoned with mustard seeds, celery seed, cinnamon, mace, cloves, vinegar, sugar, and turmeric.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Yellow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the vegetables

  1. Layer the onions, cucumbers, and cabbage in a basket, sprinkling a little salt on each layer.

  2. Cover with a clean cloth and hang the basket for 24 hours.

  3. Wash off the salt and drain the vegetables.

Pickle

  1. In a jar, combine the vegetables with the mustard seeds, celery seed, cinnamon, mace, and cloves.

  2. Boil the vinegar with sugar and turmeric, then pour it over the pickles.

  3. Repeat boiling and pouring the vinegar over the pickles for four mornings.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 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

Cucumbers
Provide the main crisp body of the pickle, which softens somewhat during salting and pickling.
Cabbage
Adds bulk and crunch, holding its texture through the salting and vinegar soaking.
Onions
Contribute sharp flavour and sweetness that mellows as the pickle sits in the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the overall flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that deepens with time in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the vegetables. Salt draws water out of the onions, cucumbers and cabbage. Rinsing off the excess salt and draining well keeps the pickle from tasting harsh and stops extra water from diluting the vinegar brine.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, cabbage, mustard, celery, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cabbage, mustard, celery, cinnamon, clove. 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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