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Piccalilli, Oh Indian Pickle

A pickled vegetable mixture of cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, melon, apple, French beans, and plum with ginger, vinegar, pepper, turmeric, mustard seed, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Piccalilli, Oh Indian Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Lay the quartered cabbage, cauliflowers, cucumbers, melons, apples, French beans, and plums on a hair sieve.

  2. Strew a large handful of coarse sea salt over the vegetables and set them in the sun for 3 to 4 days until very dry.

  3. Put the dried vegetables into a stone jar.

Prepare the ginger

  1. Scrape and slice the ginger, then salt it and dry it in the sun.

Pickle and keep

  1. Add the dried ginger to the gallon of vinegar along with the pepper, turmeric, and bruised mustard seed.

  2. Seal the jar tightly and add fresh vinegar as needed when new ingredients come into season.

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 + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  3. Apple + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

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

  5. Melon + plumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the firm, crisp bulk of the pickle, holding its texture after drying.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the vegetables so they dry and stay crisp in the jar.
Ginger
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that flavours the vinegar.
Vinegar
Acidity preserves the pickle and carries the flavour of the spices.
Mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour to the pickling liquor.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables in salt. Salting and sun-drying must draw out enough moisture; if the vegetables stay damp, they dilute the vinegar and the pickle can spoil or turn soft.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, melon, beans, plum, ginger):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, melon, beans, plum, ginger. 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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