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Indian Pickle

A vinegar-based pickle with garlic, ginger, mustard seed, cayenne pepper, and salted vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Indian Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Mix vinegar, garlic, salt, ginger, mustard seed, and cayenne pepper in a large bowl.

Salt the vegetables

  1. Soak your chosen vegetables in salt for 3 days.

Pickle and rest

  1. Place the salted vegetables into a pickle bottle and cork it.

  2. Let the pickle sit for 3 weeks before using.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Salt
Draws water out of the vegetables and helps keep them firm and crisp during pickling.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and sharp flavour that deepens as the pickle matures.
Ginger
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.
White mustard seed
Adds pungency and a sharp, aromatic bite to the brine.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the pickle its spicy character.

The step that matters

Salting the vegetables for 3 days. Salt draws moisture out of the vegetables through osmosis. Soaking long enough softens and seasons them evenly, while the brine keeps them from spoiling. Too little time leaves them wet and under-seasoned.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, garlic, mustard, pepper, onion, 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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