Skip to main content
Main

India Pickle

A pickle made from gherkins, onions, nasturtiums, radish pods, French beans, cauliflowers, cabbages, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Radish and cauliflower share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

India Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the onions and soak them in salt water for a week to reduce their strength.

  2. In a pan, combine the gherkins, onions, nasturtiums, radish pods, French beans, cauliflowers, and sliced cabbages.

  3. Sprinkle the mixture with coarse sea salt.

Dry

  1. After a day or two, remove the vegetables from the pan and dry them thoroughly in a warm, shaded place.

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. Radish + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Cauliflower + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  3. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Radish + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together106 recipes

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

  5. Radish + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soaking in salt water reduces their harsh sharpness, and they hold their texture while pickling.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables, firming them and preparing them for preserving.
Cabbages
Firm leaves that become crisp and sturdy as they are salted and dried.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables thoroughly. Any surface moisture left on the vegetables dilutes the salt and can encourage spoilage, so they must be fully dry before preserving.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (radish, beans, cauliflower, cabbage):

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against radish, beans, cauliflower, cabbage. 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.

More indian pickle recipes

East 23West 7 See all 56 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipes