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Piccalilli

Piccalilli is a pickled relish of cucumbers, onions, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, beans, and herbs in a vinegar and spice mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower 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

Ingredients

Directions

Dry the vegetables

  1. Salt the cucumbers, onions, and cauliflower.

  2. Place them on a large sieve in the sun to dry for 3 days.

  3. Scald the dried vegetables in vinegar for 3-4 minutes. Let them cool.

  4. Salt and dry the cabbage in the sun for 3-4 days.

  5. Scald the cabbage in vinegar.

  6. Boil the carrots in vinegar with a little coarse sea salt. Cut the carrots into shapes.

  7. Process the French beans, rock samphire, reddish pods, and nasturtiums similarly to the cucumbers.

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Combine 1 gallon of vinegar with ginger, white pepper, allspice, chillies, turmeric, and shallots in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture into a pan.

  4. Mix the mustard with a little vinegar until smooth. Combine the mustard with the strained vinegar mixture when cool.

Pack and seal

  1. Place all the pickles in a large pan. Pour the vinegar mixture over them, ensuring they are well coated.

  2. Transfer the pickles to a jar. Cover with a cloth. Tie securely.

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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + gingertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,377 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Salting and sun-drying removes water so the pickles stay crisp in the spiced vinegar.
Cabbage
Salting and drying firm the leaves so they hold their texture after scalding in vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and carries the spice flavours.
Mustard
Adds pungent heat and flavour to the spiced vinegar that coats the pickles.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its bright yellow colour and earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the vegetables in the sun. If the vegetables keep too much moisture, they dilute the vinegar and soften during scalding. Drying them fully before they go into the vinegar helps them stay crisp and keeps the pickle well preserved.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, onion, cauliflower, cabbage, carrot, vinegar, beans):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, onion, cauliflower, cabbage, carrot, vinegar, beans. 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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