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
Combine vinegar, garlic, salt, ginger, mustard seed, and cayenne pepper in a large bowl.
Prepare your chosen vegetables by soaking them in salt for 3 days.
Pickle
After 3 days, place the vegetables in a pickle bottle and pour the vinegar mixture over them.
Cork the bottle and let it sit for 3 weeks before using.
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.
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Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together29,058 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
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Mustard + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together687 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together290 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Mustard + beanstop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together852 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked 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 acidic liquid that preserves and sharpens the pickle.
- Salt
- Draws water out of the vegetables and helps keep them firm and preserved.
- Mustard seed
- Adds pungent, sharp flavour that develops during the long soak.
- Garlic
- Contributes pungent aroma and savoury flavour to the brine.
- Ginger
- Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the pickling liquid.
- Cayenne pepper
- Adds heat that spreads through the vegetables as they steep.
The step that matters
Soaking the vegetables in salt for 3 days. Salt draws water out of the vegetables. If they are not soaked long enough, they stay wet and may dilute the vinegar mixture or pickle unevenly, so the full 3-day soak matters before adding the vinegar.
Swap the ginger
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, garlic, mustard, pepper, onion, cauliflower, beans):
- Capersfits better
- Turmericfits better
- Cuminfits better
- 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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