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Mixed Sweet Pickles

Mixed sweet pickles made from cauliflower, carrots, onions, pickles, sweetened with sugar and spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, mustard seed, ginger, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mixed Sweet Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the cauliflower, carrots, and onions until tender but firm, separate the cauliflower.

  2. Cut each carrot into about 5 slices.

  3. Place all ingredients, including the washed, uncooked pickles, in sterilized fruit jars.

Make the syrup and seal

  1. Boil the remaining ingredients together for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the hot mixture into the jars and seal airtight.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together981 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Adds firm, crisp texture that holds up to the sweet pickling liquid.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps balance the sharp vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and gives the pickles their tang.
Carrots
Contribute firm texture and natural sweetness to the mixed pickles.
Mustard seed
Adds a sharp, aromatic pungency to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables until tender but firm. Overcooking softens the cauliflower, carrots, and onions into mush, while undercooking leaves them raw and hard. Cooking to the right point gives a crisp, pleasant bite after they absorb the hot pickling liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, carrot, cider, vinegar, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, carrot, cider, vinegar, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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