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Pickled Cauliflower

A pickled cauliflower prepared with mustard, turmeric, vinegar, sugar, mustard seed, and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 514 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender, then divide it into florets.

Make the pickling sauce

  1. In a porcelain-lined kettle, heat the vinegar.

  2. Mix the mustard and turmeric together, moisten with a little cold vinegar, and stir into the hot vinegar until it thickens.

  3. Add the sugar, mustard seed, and salad oil, and stir again.

Pickle and store

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the cauliflower.

  2. Once cool, store in glass or stone jars until ready to use.

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. Turmeric + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + cauliflowertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the firm, crisp-tender body of the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
English mustard
Adds pungent heat and, with the vinegar, thickens the sauce as it stirs in.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its bright yellow colour and earthy aroma.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smoother body.

The step that matters

Stirring the mustard and turmeric into the hot vinegar. Mustard flour must be moistened first and then added to hot vinegar gradually while stirring, otherwise it clumps instead of forming a smooth, evenly thickened sauce.

Swap the turmeric

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Turmericthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, sugar, cauliflower. 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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