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Pickled Cauliflower

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 139 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Select the closest and whitest cauliflower flowers and put them in bunches.

  2. Spread them on earthen dishes and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. After three days, transfer them to earthen jars and pour scalding salt water over them.

  4. Let them stand for six to eight hours, then drain carefully.

  5. Pack the cauliflower into glass jars, cover with vinegar, and seal tightly.

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 + horseradishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cauliflower + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 recipes

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

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

Swap the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, vinegar):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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