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Yellow Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, beans, onions, garlic, mustard seed, turmeric, ginger, curry powder, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turmeric 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 ↓

Yellow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Salt and dry

  1. Combine cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, and French beans in a bowl and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let them sit for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables on a sieve.

  4. Lay them on cloths to dry for 12 days in the sun or near a fire.

  5. Mix in the small onions and garlic.

  6. Let them dry for 2 more days.

Pack and pickle

  1. Transfer the mixture to a large jar.

  2. Add the white mustard seed, turmeric, white ginger, and curry powder.

  3. Fill the jar with boiling vinegar.

  4. Cover it tightly.

  5. Let it sit in a warm place for a few days.

  6. If the mixture is too thick, add more boiling vinegar.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables, firming them and preparing them to hold the vinegar.
Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the pickle, giving crisp, firm pieces that absorb the vinegar.
Cabbage
Supplies most of the bulk, giving a crisp texture that holds up through pickling.
White mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows as the pickle matures in vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and a mild, earthy flavour.
Boiling vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables thoroughly before packing. Any remaining moisture dilutes the vinegar and weakens its preserving acidity, and can encourage spoilage. Thorough drying helps the pickle keep and stay crisp.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cabbage, beans, onion, garlic, mustard, turmeric):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cabbage, beans, onion, garlic, mustard, turmeric. 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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