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East Indian Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix of cucumbers, horseradish, cabbage, cauliflower, onions, green peppers, and spices in vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

East Indian Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cabbage finely.

  2. Soak all vegetables in salt water for 24 hours.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

Make the vinegar

  1. Prepare the vinegar by boiling cider vinegar with black pepper, white mustard seed, and ground turmeric.

  2. Let the vinegar cool, then stir in yellow mustard.

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. Horseradish + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Cucumber + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together640 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, firm body of the pickle as the main vegetable.
Cider vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the vegetables during soaking, firming their texture and reducing moisture.
White mustard seed
Adds pungent, sharp flavour to the brine.
Yellow mustard
Adds tang and heat to the finished vinegar.
Ground turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Soaking the vegetables in salt water for 24 hours. Salt draws moisture out of the vegetables through osmosis. Soaking for the full time firms the texture and makes the pickle crisp; too short a soak leaves the vegetables soft and watery in the jar.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, horseradish, cabbage, cauliflower, pepper, cider, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, horseradish, cabbage, cauliflower, pepper, cider, vinegar. 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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