Name: Cauliflowers or Brocoli
Ingredients: whitest and firmest cauliflowers; coarse sea salt; clean water; distilled or white wine vinegar; mace; long pepper; white peppercorns; allspice

Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cauliflowers or Brocoli

Ingredients

Directions

Choose the whitest and firmest cauliflowers.
Cut or break the flowers into small branches.
Soak them in a strong brine (enough salt for an egg to float) for 7-10 days.
Boil the cauliflowers in clean water for 10-15 minutes until tender but crisp.
Drain and spread them on a cloth or sieve to dry in the sun until moisture evaporates.
Place them in a jar and cover with vinegar.
Add spices to the vinegar and warm it by the fire without boiling.
Pour the cooled vinegar over the cauliflowers.
Seal the jar and store it, topping up with vinegar as needed.

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.

Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cauliflower + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together105 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,113 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
White wine + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,433 recipes

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

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, white wine, pepper, allspice):

Thymefits better
Clovefits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

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