Skip to main content
Main

Mixed Pickle

A pickled mixture of ginger, garlic, turmeric, long pepper, and assorted salted vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ginger and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,776 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Mixed Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Combine ginger root, garlic, vinegar, turmeric, and long pepper in a stone jar.

  2. Let the mixture digest for 2-3 days near a fire.

  3. Gently simmer the mixture in a saucepan.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the assorted vegetables to the mixture.

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. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Turmeric + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + turmerictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickling liquid.
Ginger root
Adds a pungent, aromatic flavour to the liquid.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and savoury depth to the liquid.
Turmeric
Gives the pickling liquid its yellow colour and earthy flavour.
Long pepper
Adds warm, peppery heat and aroma to the liquid.

The step that matters

Gently simmer the mixture. Keeping the heat gentle stops the vinegar from boiling hard and evaporating, and avoids scorching the spices, so the flavours stay balanced and the liquid keeps its intended strength.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, garlic, vinegar, turmeric, pepper, cabbage):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, garlic, vinegar, turmeric, pepper, cabbage. 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.

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes