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Spanish Pickle

A pickled mixture of cauliflower, tomatoes, onions, peppers, cabbage, cucumber pickles, mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, horseradish, vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Spanish Pickle

Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Spanish Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak the cauliflower in salt water overnight.

  2. Chop the green tomatoes, onions, and mango peppers separately, sprinkle with salt, and drain overnight.

  3. In the morning, chop twice the amount of cabbage as you have tomatoes and mix with the drained vegetables.

  4. Add the cucumber pickles, cutting some round and some lengthwise.

Season and cover

  1. Mix in the white mustard seed, celery seed, turmeric, and grated horseradish.

  2. Add enough vinegar to cover the mixture, adjusting with water if the vinegar is very sour, and sweeten to taste.

  3. If desired, add fresh celery cut into squares or diamonds.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 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

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the pickle and release moisture that the salting draws out.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and body to the mixture.
Cucumber pickles
Add tang and a firm, crunchy bite to the mix.
White mustard seed
Contributes sharp, pungent flavour that mellows in the vinegar.
Horseradish
Adds pungent heat that fades during pickling.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp taste.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the vegetables overnight. Salt draws water out of the tomatoes, onions, and peppers by osmosis. Draining well removes that liquid, so the finished pickle stays crisp rather than watery and diluted in the vinegar.

Swap the mango

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, tomato, onion, pepper, cabbage, cucumber, mustard):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, tomato, onion, pepper, cabbage, cucumber, mustard. 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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