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Cauliflower Pickled

A pickled cauliflower dish preserved in vinegar and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 888 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower Pickled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Pick and wash the cauliflower, then cut off 3 pounds of flowered buds and arrange them in small, equal-sized bunches.

  2. Submerge the bunches in a pan of cold water.

Blanch and pickle

  1. In a saucepan, bring lightly salted water to a boil and add the cauliflower.

  2. Boil for 6 minutes, then drain and place in an earthen jar.

  3. Pour hot boiling vinegar over the cauliflower and cover the jar until the next day.

  4. The next day, drain off the vinegar, boil it again with a little salt, and pour it hot over the cauliflower in the jar.

  5. Once cooled, cover tightly and store in a cool place.

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. Cauliflower + vinegartop 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 buds
Form the crisp, firm body of the pickle that absorbs the brine.
Vinegar
Acidifies the brine, preserving the cauliflower and giving it its sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the hot vinegar over the cauliflower. The vinegar must be at a full boil so it penetrates the florets and helps keep them safe from spoilage during storage. Pouring it over cooled cauliflower would leave the pickling less effective.

“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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