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Indian Pickles

A vinegar-based pickle brine with mustard, spices, and sugar, boiled and then used to pickle vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Indian Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. In a large pot, combine the vinegar, mustard, black pepper, cloves, allspice, turmeric, ginger, cayenne pepper, salt, and sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Pickle the vegetables

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then add your choice of vegetables and cover tightly.

  2. If the liquid becomes thin, boil it again and add more mustard after three weeks.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Turmeric + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the brine and keeps the vegetables tart.
Mustard
Adds sharp pungency and body to the brine.
Sugar
Balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Turmeric
Gives the pickling liquid and vegetables a yellow colour.
Cayenne pepper
Adds lasting heat to the brine.

The step that matters

Cooling the brine before adding the vegetables. Hot liquid continues to cook vegetables and softens them, so letting the boiled brine cool fully before adding them helps keep their texture firm and crisp.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, clove, allspice, turmeric, ginger, sugar):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, clove, allspice, turmeric, ginger, sugar. 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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