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Pickled Vindaloo

A pickled pork dish marinated in mustard oil, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turmeric and cumin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,698 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Pickled Vindaloo

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pork

  1. Cut the pork into 2-inch squares and wash well in vinegar; do not use water.

  2. Rub the meat with the ground ingredients and steep in vinegar for 24 hours.

Cook

  1. Boil the mustard oil in a pot, then fry the ground ingredients in the boiling oil.

  2. Add the marinated meat, its vinegar, more salt to taste, additional vinegar, bay leaves, and whole peppercorns.

  3. Simmer until the meat is tender.

Cool and store

  1. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.

  2. Transfer to dry stone jars with screw tops, ensuring the meat is covered with oil from cooking.

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. Turmeric + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,698 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Coriander + cumintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Ginger + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long simmer and absorbs the spiced vinegar.
English vinegar
Acidity that tenderises and preserves the meat during marinating and cooking.
Mustard oil
Carries the fried spices and fat that coat the meat and help preserve it.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the spice base.

The step that matters

Let the meat cool completely before jarring. Jarring warm meat traps steam and moisture, and any gap in the oil layer lets air reach the meat, which can spoil it. Cooling fully and keeping the meat under oil keeps it preserved.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, garlic, ginger, turmeric, pepper, coriander, cumin):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, ginger, turmeric, pepper, coriander, cumin. 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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