Name: Pickled Cauliflowers
Ingredients: large, ripe cauliflowers; coarse sea salt; mace; nutmeg; best cider vinegar; sweet oil

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the leaves and stalks from the cauliflowers and divide the blossoms into equal-sized clusters.
Bring a porcelain kettle of water to a boil, adding a little salt.
Simmer the cauliflower clusters, skimming the surface as needed.
Once boiling, use a perforated skimmer to remove the cauliflower and drain on a sieve.
Place the drained cauliflower into stone jars, filling them three-quarters full.
Infuse mace and nutmeg in cider vinegar and simmer for 1 hour.
Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the cauliflower in the jars, filling them to the top.
Add sweet oil last, cover while warm, and seal with leather.

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.

Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Cauliflower + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together126 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cauliflower + vinegartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together888 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cauliflower + cidertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together141 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, nutmeg, cider, vinegar):

Allspicefits better
Cinnamonfits better
Clovefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, nutmeg, cider, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.