Skip to main content
Main

Yankee Mixed Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, green peppers, and green tomatoes in a mustard-sugar vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Yankee Mixed Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the cucumbers, onions, cauliflowers, green peppers, and green tomatoes.

  2. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt and let stand overnight.

  3. Scald the vegetables in the same brine water and drain through a colander.

Make the dressing and pickle

  1. In a pot, dissolve ½ pound of ground mustard, ¼ cup of flour, 1½ cups of sugar, and 4 teaspoons of celery seed in 3 quarts of cider vinegar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour it over the pickled 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. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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
Form the crisp, bulky body of the pickle.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp tang.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavor and heat that carries through the vinegar brine.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture so it clings to the vegetables.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Onions
Add savory depth and bulk to the mixed vegetables.

The step that matters

Scalding the vegetables. Scalding softens the vegetables slightly so they absorb the brine, while overcooking turns them mushy. Draining well keeps excess water from diluting the vinegar dressing.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, tomato, cider, vinegar, mustard. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes