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Indian Pickle, or Piccalillo

A fermented vegetable pickle made with cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, radish pods, kidney beans, beetroot, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and radish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 212 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Indian Pickle, or Piccalillo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Chop the cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, radish pods, kidney beans, and beetroot.

  2. Place the chopped vegetables in a colander and sprinkle with salt.

  3. Let them dry in the sunshine or near a fire for three days.

Pack and pickle

  1. Layer the dried vegetables in a large earthen pot, adding a handful of brown mustard seed between each layer.

  2. Pour enough strong vinegar to cover the vegetables, adding 1 ounce of turmeric for every four quarts of vinegar.

  3. Heat the vinegar mixture and pour it over the pickles.

  4. Let the pickles sit on the hearth for twelve days until they turn bright yellow and most of the vinegar evaporates.

Add the spiced vinegar and store

  1. In a pot, boil 2 quarts of strong vinegar with mace, white pepper, cloves, long pepper, and nutmeg for ten minutes.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the pickles and add the peeled garlic.

  3. Seal the pot tightly and store for 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. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  3. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Cucumber + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together345 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky body of the pickle that holds up to long soaking.
Brown mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during the long pickling period.
Strong vinegar
Acid that preserves the vegetables and softens their texture over time.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its bright yellow colour and a warm, earthy flavour.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the pickled vegetables.
Cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the spiced vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying the salted vegetables. Salting and drying draw out water before the vinegar is added. Vegetables still wet would dilute the vinegar, weakening preservation and leaving the pickle soggy.

Swap the kidney beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, radish, beetroot, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Kidney beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, radish, beetroot, mustard, vinegar. 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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