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Pickled Cauliflower

Pickled cauliflower with onions, red peppers, vinegar, mustard, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Pickled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cauliflower into small pieces.

  2. Add the onions and red peppers.

  3. Dissolve ¼ cup of coarse sea salt in water to cover the vegetables and let stand overnight.

  4. Drain the vegetables in the morning.

Pickle

  1. Heat 1 quart of vinegar and 3 tablespoons of mustard until boiling.

  2. Add the vegetables and boil for 15 minutes.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the main bulk of the pickle and keeps a firm, crisp bite once brined and cooked.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour and aroma to the hot pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Overnight salt soak. Salt draws water out of the vegetables through osmosis, so they stay crisp rather than soft. Draining them before the hot vinegar step matters because excess brine would dilute the pickling liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, pepper, vinegar, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, pepper, vinegar, mustard. 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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