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India Pickle

A pickled mixture of cucumbers, onions, green peppers, sugar, mustard, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

India Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Soak cucumbers, onions, and green peppers in salt water for 24 hours, then drain.

Season and pickle

  1. Add brown sugar, ground mustard, olive oil, celery seed, grated nutmegs, ground ginger, mace, turmeric, black mustard seed, white mustard seed, garlic, and horseradish.

  2. Pour strong cider vinegar over the mixture.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the bulk of the pickle and give it its crisp, crunchy body.
Onions
Add bulk, sweetness and savoury flavour to the pickle.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Strong cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent, sharp flavour that complements the vinegar and spices.

The step that matters

Soak the vegetables in salt water for 24 hours. Salt draws water out of the cucumbers, onions and peppers through osmosis. Draining afterwards removes that liquid, so the vegetables stay firm and crisp rather than watery once the vinegar is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, pepper, sugar, mustard, olive, celery, nutmeg):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, sugar, mustard, olive, celery, nutmeg. 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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