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Hot Pickle

A spicy pickle made with shallots, ginger, spices, vinegar, and fresh vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Hot Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. In a stewpan, combine minced shallots, whole ginger, salt, mustard seed, pepper, cayenne, and allspice.

  2. Pour in the vinegar and bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a jar and let it cool.

Add the vegetables

  1. Once cooled, add any fresh vegetables you have on hand.

  2. You can add more pickle and vegetables as they come into season.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickle and gives it its sharp flavor.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent flavor that develops as the seeds steep in the hot vinegar.
Ginger
Adds warm, aromatic heat that infuses into the vinegar.
Cayenne pepper
Adds sharp capsaicin heat, which is the main source of the pickle's spiciness.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Boiling the vinegar with the spices extracts their flavor and aroma into the liquid. Letting the mixture cool fully before adding fresh vegetables helps keep the vegetables crisp and reduces the risk of them going soft.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, mustard, pepper, allspice, vinegar, cauliflower, beans):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, mustard, pepper, allspice, vinegar, cauliflower, beans. 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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