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Pickled Cauliflower

A dish of cauliflower florets pickled in a vinegar and spice brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower clusters in scalding brine for 3 minutes.

  2. Drain the clusters and place them in a jar with cold vinegar for 2 days.

  3. After 2 days, remove the cauliflower and arrange the clusters in jars.

Make the pickling liquid

  1. In a pot, combine 1 gallon of vinegar, 1 cup of sugar, celery seed, coriander seed, mustard seed, whole white pepper, mace, and sliced red pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes, then pour it over the cauliflower in the jars.

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

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

  4. Celery + coriandertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the crisp, firm body of the pickle that holds its texture in the brine.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp, sour flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, warm flavour that infuses into the pickling liquid.
Red pepper
Adds colour and a mild sweet pepper flavour to the jars.

The step that matters

Draining and resting the cauliflower in cold vinegar. Boiling in brine softens the cauliflower, and the two-day rest in cold vinegar lets it firm up and begin to take on acidity before the hot pickling liquid is added. Skipping or shortening this rest can leave the pickle soft and less tangy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, celery, coriander, mustard, white pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, vinegar, sugar, celery, coriander, mustard, white pepper. 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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