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To Make Indian Pickle, or Picalillo

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

To Make Indian Pickle, or Picalillo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

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

  2. Place them in a colander and sprinkle with salt.

  3. Set them in the sun or near a fire for three days to dry.

Pickle

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

  2. In a pot, combine enough ale vinegar to cover the vegetables with 1 ounce of turmeric, and boil together.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the vegetables and let it sit for twelve days on the hearth until bright yellow and most of the vinegar is absorbed.

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

  5. Pour this mixture over the pickles.

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

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the pickle and provides crisp texture once dried and pickled.
Cauliflower
Adds bulk and firm texture that holds up through the long pickling.
Salt
Draws water out of the vegetables during drying, so they take up the vinegar less watery.
Ale vinegar
Acidic liquid that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its bright yellow colour and an earthy, aromatic flavour.
Brown mustard seed
Adds a pungent, sharp flavour between the layers of vegetables.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables after salting. Drying in sun or warmth for three days removes surface water so the vegetables stay crisp and absorb the vinegar rather than diluting it. Too little drying leaves the pickle watery and prone to spoiling.

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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