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Vegetable Marrow Pickle

A pickled preserve of young aubergines seasoned with vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,677 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Vegetable Marrow Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the aubergines

  1. Pierce the young aubergines in several places and soak them in strong cold brine for about 2 hours.

  2. Strain the aubergines and place them into jars.

Pickle and seal

  1. Boil enough malt vinegar to cover the fruit in the jars.

  2. Add 2 chopped shallots, 10 cloves, 10 black peppercorns, 6 pimentoes, 4 long peppercorns, 4 red chillies, and 3 bay leaves to every quart of vinegar.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar over the fruit in the jars and seal them.

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. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Pear + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pear + shallottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Young aubergines
Form the pickle's body, absorbing the hot vinegar and spices as they cool in the jar.
Malt vinegar
Acidity that preserves the fruit and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Red chillies
Add heat that builds in the vinegar as it steeps around the fruit.
Shallots
Add a mild, sharp onion flavour that softens as the pickle matures.

The step that matters

Pour the hot vinegar over the fruit and seal. The vinegar must be boiling and the fruit fully covered, with jars sealed while hot, so the acid can penetrate and keep the aubergines safe from spoilage microbes during storage.

Swap the pear

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (malt, vinegar, shallot, clove):

  1. Cherryfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against malt, vinegar, shallot, clove. 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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