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Pickled Cauliflowers

A pickled cauliflower dish with onions, peppers, sea salt, vinegar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the salt in enough water to cover the vegetables and let them soak overnight.

  2. In the morning, drain the vegetables.

Pickle

  1. Heat the vinegar with the mustard until it boils.

  2. Add the vegetables and boil for about 15 minutes, or until a fork can easily pierce the cauliflower.

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

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the main body of the pickle and becomes tender but firm during boiling.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables during the overnight soak, firming their texture.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling the vegetables in the vinegar. Boiling for too long makes the cauliflower soft and mushy, while too short a time leaves it raw. Checking that a fork pierces it easily helps keep the florets firm yet tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, pepper, vinegar, 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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