Skip to main content
Preserve

Pickled Cauliflower

Pickled cauliflower preserved in a spiced vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Clean the cauliflower and boil it in salted water for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the cauliflower and place it in cold water for 1 minute.

  3. Cut the cauliflower into pieces and place them in jars.

Make the pickling liquor

  1. In a bag, combine the red pepper pod, white mustard seed, mace, cloves, allspice, and ginger.

  2. Boil the spice bag with the cider vinegar.

  3. Repeat this process once a week for 4 weeks.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Is the vegetable being preserved, becoming firm and crisp when pickled in vinegar.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acid that preserves the cauliflower and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
White mustard seed
Adds a pungent, slightly bitter flavour that develops as the spices steep in the vinegar.
Red pepper pod
Adds heat that spreads through the vinegar as it is boiled with the spices.

The step that matters

Repeat the boiling of the spice bag weekly. Boiling the spices with vinegar extracts their flavour into the liquid, and repeating the process over several weeks lets the flavour build up and penetrate the cauliflower gradually.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cider, vinegar, pepper, mustard, clove, allspice. 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.

More pickled cauliflower recipes

Spiced 3 See all 97 →

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes