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Pickled Cauliflower

A preserved cauliflower dish pickled in a mustard, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, mace, and vinegar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Coriander and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,505 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select the whitest and firmest cauliflowers on a fine day.

  2. Separate them into bunches and scald in hot salt water without boiling.

  3. Cover while cooling, then place in a colander and sprinkle lightly with salt.

  4. Drain for 24 hours.

Pickle

  1. Boil mustard, coriander seed, ginger, nutmeg, and mace, and vinegar together slowly.

  2. After draining, pack the cauliflower into glass jars and cover with the pickling liquid.

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. Coriander + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 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.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives a sharp taste.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that mellows during pickling.
Coriander seed
Adds a warm, citrusy aroma to the pickling liquid.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and a gentle bite.
Mace
Adds a warm, sweet-spiced aroma.

The step that matters

Scald without boiling. Boiling softens the cauliflower and makes it mushy. Scalding in hot salt water keeps the florets firm. Salting and draining afterwards draws out moisture, so the pickled cauliflower stays crisp rather than watery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, mustard, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, mustard, coriander, ginger, nutmeg, vinegar. 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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