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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of cucumbers, cauliflower, onions, and peppers flavored with mustard, turmeric, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak cucumbers, cauliflower, baby onions, and chopped peppers overnight in 4 quarts of water and 1 pint of coarse sea salt.

  2. In the morning, scald the vegetables in the brine, then drain them.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. In a pot, bring the vinegar to a boil.

  2. Stir in the flour, mustard, turmeric, and sugar until well combined.

  3. Add the drained pickles to the pot and boil for 15 minutes, stirring often.

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 + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Turmeric + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickles, becoming crisp-tender after brining and cooking.
Cauliflower
Adds bulk and firm texture that holds up to the hot vinegar sauce.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture so it clings to the vegetables as a mustard sauce.
Mustard
Provides the sharp, pungent flavor that defines the pickle.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Vinegar
Supplies the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the boiling vinegar. Flour stirred into hot liquid can clump if added too fast or without thorough mixing. Combining it well into the mustard, turmeric, and sugar first gives a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, turmeric, flour, mustard, sugar. 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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