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To Make Indian Pickle, or Picalillo

A fermented vegetable pickle made with cabbage, cauliflower, cucumbers, radish pods, kidney beans, beetroot, and spices, left to sit for weeks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 the chopped vegetables in a colander and sprinkle with salt.

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

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.

  3. Boil the mixture and pour it hot over the vegetables.

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

Add the spiced vinegar

  1. In a separate pot, combine 2 quarts of strong ale vinegar with 1 ounce of mace, ¼ ounce of cloves, long pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Boil for ten minutes and pour 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 holds its crisp texture through long salting and soaking.
Cauliflower
Absorbs the vinegar and turmeric, taking on the bright yellow colour and tangy flavour.
Brown mustard seed
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that mellows as the pickle matures.
Ale vinegar
Acts as the acid that preserves the vegetables and sharpens the flavour.
Kidney beans
Adds body and a firmer, starchy bite to the mixed vegetables.

The step that matters

Salting and drying the vegetables. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis. If they stay wet, the pickle becomes diluted and may spoil, and the vegetables stay soft rather than firm.

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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