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India Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture of green tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, and spices boiled in vinegar and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and turmeric match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,279 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

India Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice all the pickles and let them stand in salt overnight.

Cook and jar

  1. Boil the green tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, salad oil, curry powder, mustard, turmeric, black pepper, cayenne, and vinegar together.

  2. Put the mixture in a jar.

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. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and soften into a tender, tangy base as they boil.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and body that thickens the pickle as it cooks.
Cucumbers
Contribute crisp texture and fresh flavor that partly softens during salting and boiling.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp tang.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice blend that defines the dish's flavor.
Turmeric
Adds a golden color and earthy, slightly bitter flavor.

The step that matters

Salting the sliced pickles overnight. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers and tomatoes by osmosis, so they stay firmer and absorb less liquid in the hot vinegar, keeping the pickle crisp rather than watery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, mustard, turmeric, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cauliflowerfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, mustard, turmeric, pepper, 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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